STATEHOOD BILL. 


SPEECH 


HON. CHAUNCEY MfDEPEW, 

OF NEW YORK, 


IN THE 


SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 


February ii, 12, 13, and 17, 1903. 



WASHINGTON. 

1903. 





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SPEECH 

OF 

HON. CHAUNOEY M. DEPEW. 


February 11, 1903. 

The Senate having under consideration the bill (H. R. 12543) to enable the 
people of Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico to form constitutions and 
State governments and be admitted into the Union on an equal footing with 
the original States— 

Mr. DEPEW said: 

Mr. President: We debated in Congress, on the platfoim, 
and in the newspapers for over sixty years the question whether 
a State had a right to retire from the Union. We fought over 
that question for five years in the bloodiest civil war of modern 
times. The result of that war settled forever the question of the 
natipnality of the Republic of the United States. It settled for¬ 
ever that a State once in the Union could neither retire by its 
own volition nor be expelled by its sister Commonwealths. Under 
that decision, thus made permanent, the position of a State in the 
Federal Union is enormously enhanced, its value is enhanced, 
and the condition under which a Territory should be admitted 
should be more carefully inquired into than at any other previous 
period. 

The State that comes into the Union now, so far as the House 
of Representatives is concerned, affects only in proportion to its 
population the legislation of the country. But the State which 
comes into the Union now has two United States Senators in this 
body. Those two Senators may represent a population wholly 
inadequate for a sovereign State, and at the same time they neu¬ 
tralize the wishes, neutralize the voice and the vote of the 7,000,- 
000 people in New York, of the 6,000,000 in Pennsylvania, and of 
the millions in all the other States in the Union so far as they 
negative the one State which those two Senators oppose. 

We, in considering this question, are not in the dark as to the 
conditions in these Territories which are included in the omnibus 
bill. The Committee on Territories took elaborate testimony, 
heard witnesses, and gathered a volume upon this question. Not 
satisfied with that, they appointed a subcommittee of their own 
number, who, at great labor, great trouble, and great sacrifice, 
spent months going through these Territories, meeting the in¬ 
habitants, ascertaining their views, finding what was the quality 
of the population, what were its productions, what the present 
conditions which justified statehood, and what were the future 
prospects. 

Mr. BATE. Will the Senator from New York allow me to 
correct him there? I know he does not wish to misrepresent. 
The committee that went to investigate and make report on these 
5633 3 



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Territories were not gone two or three months, as was stated by 
the Senator, but they were there only a few days. They went 
through those Territories, as large as they are, in a short time, 
spending five or six days in all, and on the moving train most of 
the time. I was appointed on the subcommittee, but I did not go. 
However, that was the result. I want to correct that statement 
at this time. 

]\Ir. DEPEW. I do not want to misrepresent the committee- 

Mr. BATE. I know the Senator did not, and therefore I took 
the liberty of correcting him. 

Mr. DEPEW. But I judge from the report which the subcom¬ 
mittee has made, of the testimony which they took, of the dis¬ 
tant places which they visited, the amount of travel they did, the 
number of cities, villages, ranches, and mines they saw, that 
they must have spent more than a few days in the Territory. In 
any event, they spent time enough to present here an elaborate 
report, the statements of Vvhich have been contradicted on this 
floor by statements, but none of them have been contradicted by 
testimony such as that upon which the report of the committee 
is based. 

Now, the Government of the United States has become so vast, 
its interests have become so enormous, the questions which press 
upon Congress are so acute and require such immediate action, 
that we have been in the habit of investigating by committees, it 
being impossible for individual Senators out of the committees to 
ascertain the facts necessary for legislation. 

So with the Government of the United States, with its vast 
matters of internal commerce, of foreign commerce, of internal 
revenue, of tariff, of Territories, of colonies, of finance, of cur¬ 
rency, it has become common for the committees of this body to 
take up these questions, to examine them,as committees here do, 
and when their results are arrived at to present their report to the 
Senate. 

Except when there is a political question involved, that report 
is never questioned. Except when there is politics involved, poli¬ 
tics to be defeated or politics to be progressed, the conclusions of 
the committee are always accepted by the Senate, because the 
Senate has confidence in the committee and the committee Imows 
what individual Senators can not by any possibility ascertain. 

Now, here is a question which ought not to be political. It is 
a question affecting the integrity of the Senate, affecting the 
future legislation of our country, a question affecting the admis¬ 
sion of six Senators into this body and of a larger number of repre¬ 
sentatives into the Electoral College for the election of a President. 
That question should not be political, but it should be decided 
upon its merits. 

Nevertheless, Mr. President, we have here the extraordinary 
spectacle of one party lined up solidly for this statehood bill 
against the report of the committee and against the report of the 
subcommittee. Now, it would be impossible for a Senator on the 
Republican side or a ^nator on the Democratic side to know as 
much on this question as the committee has ascertained, or to be 
familiar enough, as a matter of intelligence or information, to 
conscientiously vote against the conclusions of the committee. 
So when one of the sides of this Chamber stands pat for this 
omnibus bill as it is, refuses to discuss it, will not argue it, wants 
to vote upon it regardless of the report and the testimony, there 
5L32 


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must be hidden somewhere a political purpose other than the ad¬ 
mission of these new States or their rights to he admitted. 

There have been two exceptions only among our Democratic 
brethren on the policy of silence which they have imposed upon 
themselves. One was the impassioned utterance of the Senator 
from Utah [Mr. Rawlins], demanding and calling and crying 
for the privileges of American citizenship for these poor people 
in the Territories of Arizona and Oklahoma and New Mexico who 
were deprived of them. It was a presentation not to move the 
judgment, but to move the sympathy for these poor people who 
were living in this condition, where apparently they were not en¬ 
joying the rights and the privileges and the immunities of Amer¬ 
ican citizenship. But there was about that appeal this inconsist¬ 
ency: That sympathy was narrow. That sympathy had bounds 
and confines to it. That sympathy did not go out at all by a sin¬ 
gle word or expression to the Americans in the Indian Territory, 
numbering more than those in Arizona and New Mexico com¬ 
bined. There it might be said that they did not have the privi¬ 
leges of American citizenship. There it might be said that they 
could not own land, that they could not acquire titles to farms, 
that they could not vote, that they could not do any of the things 
which constitute American citizenship in the other Territories. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New 
York yield to the Senator from Indiana? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. The Senator made an interesting state¬ 
ment and a very significant one about there being in the Indian 
Territory more of white population than there is in Arizona and 
New Mexico combined. That is exactly true, but it is not all the 
truth. There are over one hundred thousand more there than in 
both the other Territories combined. I thought the Senator 
would not object to having that fact brought out. 

Mr. DEPEW. I am very glad to be corrected, whether I mini¬ 
mize or whether I enlarge the fact. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. There are about 400,000 or 450,000 people 
in the Indian Territory, some say 500,000, of whom not to exceed 
80,000—and the best estimate puts it at about 70,000—are Indians, 
leaving perhaps 100,000 more white people in the Indian Territory 
than there are in the Territories of New Mexico and Arizona com¬ 
bined, according to the census. 

Mr. BATE. Mr. President, a moment, if the Senator pleases. 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New 
York yield to the Senator from Tennessee? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. BATE. In this connection I wish to state that in the In¬ 
dian Territory all the lands belonged to the 70,000 Indians, or 
whatever the number, in common and in tribal form, except small 
parts that have been given for railroad purposes or for town sites. 
They are the owners of that soil. They were there long ago by 
deeds from the United States in fee simple. They are there now; 
it is their home, and whoever comes there is more of a visitor 
than a proprietor. 

******* 

The manner in which the Indians in the Indian Territory have 
conducted themselves has been applauded by all intelligent, up¬ 
right, and Christian people. They have won the favor of all Chris- 
5632 


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tian cliurches and are commnnicants therein—the Methodist, the 
Baptist, the Presbyterian, the Episcopalian, the Catholic, all of 
whom have their churches and their schools among them; and the 
schoolhouses were put up at the common expense of the Indians 
and the teachers are paid by them. 

Not only that, but they established courts of justice there after 
the fashion of ours. They have their judges, their lawyers, 
their jurors, their inferior courts, their clerks, and sheriffalty and 
constabulary; they have their witnesses, and all the machinery 
pertaining to the administration of justice amongst the most 
civilized nations. Their courts are conducted in a manner after 
the fashion of those in the United States, and they have been con¬ 
ducted most successfully. 

Not only have they their district schools, but they have mag¬ 
nificent colleges. Among many others, there is one at Tahlequah 
which is one of the most beautiful structures and efficient insti¬ 
tutions of learning west of the Mississippi River, the beautiful 
building costing from seventy-five to one hundred thousand dol¬ 
lars. It is for the education of girls. 

The interest which they have manifested in the education and 
training of their girls is something which peculiarly attracts the 
attention of those who like and respect the Indians and wish to 
aid in elevating them in the scale of civilization. Mr. President, 
whenever you find a disposition to protect woman, to guaiffi her 
honor and cultivate and refine her gentler nature—to lift her from 
a lower to a higher degree in the scale of educational and social 
life—you find e\ddences of an advancement in civilization and re¬ 
finement. As I have said, they have established these schools for 
girls, and the one to which I have referred is the finest west of 
the Mississippi River, the cost of which has been paid out of the 
Indian funds, and no man will appreciate this more highly than 
the distinguished Senator from New York [Mr. Depew] , to whose 
courtesy I am indebted at this time for the permission of the floor. 

You may examine the history of man and you will find that 
wherever civilization, struggling to lift itself from the shadows 
of darkness, arises and begins to shed abroad its beautiful and 
beneficent light the best evidence and the first indication of it is 
the care, the politeness, the deference, and the love and honor 
shown to woman. This is illustrated in the history of all na¬ 
tions that have grown great and powerful, notably Egypt and 
Greece. Rome in the days of her grandeur and glory gave greater 
admiration to woman than during any period of her history. In 
the days of her splendor woman was a queen as she sat upon her 
little throne in the social circle of her domestic surrounding. In 
Venice, in the day of her highest culture, woman was the charm 
of her social life. The salons of Paris and the courts of London 
have felt no less her power than her charm, and in our own land 
she has ever gone hand in hand with the advance of culture and 
refinement; and why not applaud the poor Indian in his struggle 
to gain a higher social scale by educating the girls of his nation? 
******* 

Mr. DEPEW. Mr. President- 

Mr. SPOONER. Will the Senator from New York yield to me? 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New 
York yield to the Senator from Wisconsin? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. SPOONER. It is my recollection that the Senator from 
6632 


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Minnesota [Mr. Nelson] in the very able and exhaustive speedi 
which he made upon this floor, stated that by some act of 1890 or 
1891 Congress had made citizens of the Indians in the Indian Ter¬ 
ritory independent of the question of allotments. I should like 
DO ask the Senator whether my recollection is accurate? 

Mr. NELSON. That is perfectly correct. By the act of March 
3,1901,31 Statutes at Large, page 1447, every Indian in the Indian 
Territory is made a citizen of the United States. There is also a 
general law, commonly called the Dawes allotment act, under 
which every Indian who owns an allotment becomes a citizen. 
But under the act to which I first referred every Indian in the 
Territory, whether he belongs to these Five Nations or otherwise, 
is a full citizen of the United States to all intents and purposes. 

Mr. SPOONER. I tliank the Senator from New York. 

Mr. DEPEW. Mr. President, I am very glad of this interrup¬ 
tion, because it reveals what I did not know before, that there 
are 100,000 more Americans in the Indian Territory than there 
are_ in the combined white population of Arizona and New Mexico. 
This adds to the gravity of the charge which I have made, that 
the Democratic party seems to confine its sympathy to the Mexi¬ 
cans of New Mexico rather than extend it to the Americans of 
the Indian Territory; that while they want to grant these privi¬ 
leges, statehood rights and American citizenship, while they are 
yearning to give them to the Mexicans of New Mexico and to the 
Mormons of Arizona, as has been exhibited by the very eloquent 
speech of the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Bate), they have not 
a single throb for the 450,000 white Americans in the Indian Ter¬ 
ritory. 

I listened to the speech of my friend from Tennessee with the 
greatest interest, as I always do, and that beautiful tribute of his 
to womanhood did .iustice to his chivalric heart and to his glori¬ 
ous record as a soldier. He could not speak otherwise than in 
those high terms of American women and of Indian women; but 
I -svish, while he was telling us of w^hat the Indians were doing 
for their girls, placing them upon that high plane of civilization, 
that he had spoken one word at least in behalf of these 450,000 
wdiite people, men and women, to enable them to get into the 
Union, to enjoy the rights of citizenship, and not charged them 
with being interlopers, charged them with being where they had 
no right to be, charged them almost by implication with having 
the purpose of taking away from the Indians their lands by some 
process of expropriation, but that he had come out nobly and 
said, “ I am in favor of amending this bill by adding the Indian 
Territory to Oklahoma, which the Indians themselves appar¬ 
ently want, in order that the privileges of statehood may be ex¬ 
tended over all this population.” 

Then I have noticed another lack of sympathy on the part of 
the Democratic brethren. They have not one word to say for the 
100.000 white people in Alaska, that they may have the inesti¬ 
mable privileges of statehood and the inestimable privileges of 
American citizenship that can only be had through statehood. 

I have heard from our friends on the other side the most fright¬ 
ful and calamitous predictions as to what would happen if Porto 
Rico should become a State, and yet Porto Rico has established 
within one year a school system which has called hundreds and 
hundreds of school-teachers from the United States. The last 
report of the governor of Porto Rico shows that they are taxing 
5632 


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themselves for these schoolhoiises; that they aie erecting them 
at every crossroads, and that within a year there will not he a 
child in Porto Rico who will not have the benefits of an Ameri¬ 
can school. The testimony is that not only the children but the 
adults are attending those schools in order to acquire the English 
language, in order to be able to read American newspapers in the 
Englsh language, in order to legislate in the English language, 
and in order to be in all respects American citizens. 

There is not one word of sympathy for the Porto Ricans, who 
are in a condition not even so fortunate, so far as the opportuni¬ 
ties of American citizenship are concerned, as are the people in 
the Territory of New Mexico. And yet there is an abounding 
sympathy for the Mexicans—90,000 of them in New Mexico—who 
for three generations have not made an attempt to acquire the 
English language or to become American citizens. It seems to 
me that the position is as inconsistent as possible, and that it 
can only be accounted for by some high method of politics. 

I beg pardon for making the statement that there has been no 
argument advanced by our Democratic friends who are standing 
solidly and silently in an unbroken phalanx behind their distin¬ 
guished leader, my able friend the Senator from Pennsylvania 
[Mr. Quay] , for there has been one speech on that side—very 
eloquent, very exhaustive, and very convincing; I refer to the elo¬ 
quent and able argument on behalf of statehood which just closed 
to-day, when the venerable and eloquent Senator from Alabama 
[Mr. Morgan] took his seat. For four and five hours, sir, the 
Senator from Alabama advocated the omnibus bill. He based it 
upon the fact that the Indian is far superior to the white man 
when you give him an equal opportunity. He based it upon the 
fact that we have violated or propose to violate the protocol which 
exists between Colombia and some other Central American State. 

Under those conditions it seems to me that the argument for 
statehood as it comes from the Democratic side presents features 
which it is almost impossible for us to meet. There is this diffi¬ 
culty about the presentation made on behalf of statehood by the 
eloquent, the able, and the venerable Senator from Alabama. If 
the 27,000 Indians in Arizona are superior to the 90,000 whites 
who are there; if the 30,000 Indians in New Mexico are superior 
to the Mexicans who are there, the difficulty is they are in the 
minority and they can not exercise those high qualities which, as 
the Senator says, have passed their names down through all the 
centuries since the Pilgrims first landed on Plymouth Rock. It 
may be that there are in New Mexico and Arizona, among the 
27,000 in one Territory and the 30,000 in another, men who might 
make those Territories, if they came in as States, worthy of state¬ 
hood if their patriotic and intelligent purposes could be carried 
out—men like these, who have been named by the Senator from 
Alabama: Black Hawk, Brandt, Canastogo, Comanche, Egero- 
mont, Ensamore, Jim Fife, George Sagamore, and George Guess. 

Mr. President, with 27,000 such patriots of a race which has 
done such heroic deeds in one Territory and 30,000 in another I 
am not sure, if I could agree with the Senator from Alabama in 
his estimate of the race, but that I should vote for the statehood 
bill if the Senator from Pennsylvania would consent to have a 
clause put in their constitutions that none but Indians should vote. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Did the Senator from Alabama mention 
the name of Geronimo? 

5632 


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Mr. DEPEW. Geronimo is not in the list. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. He is the Indian gentleman and patriot 
■who was the leader of the Indians of Arizona. Since the Senator 
from Alabama was talking about the heroes, I thought perhaps 
he was included in the list. I wish to ask the Senator whether 
he is? 

Mr. DEPEW. I have no doubt, answering the question of thej 
Senator from Indiana, that from the stand taken by my distin¬ 
guished friend, the Senator from Alabama, Geronimo was a pa-^ 
triot, fighting for his lands, fighting for his country, fighting ioxj 
his wife, fighting for his children, fighting for his people, but thaf( 
is not my view. That seems to be the view presented by our 
Democratic friends in the arguments which they offer for the 
omnibus statehood bill. 

Mr. President, why do our friends on the other side stand in 
such solid, silent phalanx behind this measure? They will deny 
that there is politics in it. The public press says there are sure 
to be two Democratic Senators from Arizona and two from New 
Mexico, and that Oklahoma is already going the same way be¬ 
cause of the large immigration that is going in from Texas, 
Arkansas, and Missouri. So it might be claimed, if the press is 
correct, that there will be six Democratic Senators added to this 
body and nine Democratic votes in the electoral college. 

I make no such charge, because our Democratic friends would 
never move for a measure like this on considerations such as six 
Senators and nine votes in the electoral college. They have never 
before been united on a question of statehood. They have never 
before shown this anxiety for the admission of new States. On 
the contrary they have opposed many of them and given reasons 
which I confess ought to have prevailed. 

I want to say—and I say this from experience and observation— 
that while the old lady of the Democracy, who is so frequently 
typified in picture and in caricature, is still jmung, still frisky, 
and still attractive, and while she has been successful in her flir¬ 
tations for a hundred years, flirting with the Greenbacker and 
capturing him, flirting with the Populist and capturing him, flirt¬ 
ing with the Silverite and absorbing him, that when she under¬ 
takes this most perilous flirtation ■with that most dangerous 
and fascinating gentleman whom she is now following, the Sen¬ 
ator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Quay] , she is in more danger than 
she ever was in her life. [Laughter.] He has hypnotized her, 
and before he gets through I do not know what will happen. 
[Laughter.] 

Mr. President, there have been many reasons for malring 
States. Nothing more able and eloquent has been presented on 
that question here than the speech of my friend the Senator from 
Ohio [Mr. Foraker]. But in the making of States there are 
rules which apply to different ages and periods that do not apply 
to others. When the Republic was first formed one question 
which met our fathers on the threshold was how to make equal the 
small and the big States; how Delaware and Rhode Island were 
to have their equal voice and action compared with New York, 
Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. 

It was necessary then in the forming of a government to make 
a compromise. We were not then letting in new States, either 
to expand and enlarge our suffrage and our power or to diminish 
it. But there were thirteen colonies which had been fighting 
5632 



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together to form a more perfect union, and they had to compro¬ 
mise. That compromise was that population should govern in 
the popular branch, but, without regard to population, the sover¬ 
eignty of the State should be represented by ambassadors in the 
Senate of the United States, elected by the legislatures of the 
States, representing in their corporate capacity the sovereignty 
of the Commonwealth. But any obligation to let in a new State 
ceased with the formation of this compact, ceased with the crea¬ 
tion of the Republic under these conditions. 

But we were then a small country so far as population was con¬ 
cerned. It was necessary for us to extend our power along the 
Ohio and to the Mississippi, and so a rule was adopted, which, if 
applied now, would rule out this bill absolutely—a rule of pro¬ 
portionate population, by which, under the ordinance of 1787, 
whenever the Territory reached GO,000 inhabitants it must be ad¬ 
mitted into the Union. The same proportionate number now 
would require nearly eleven hundred thousand for Statehood. 
Everybody knew the conditions of that territory. Everybody 
knew that it had fertile plains, that it had vast possibilities of 
agriculture, that it had abundant and abounding opportunities 
for great populations in the future. Everybody knew that we 
were taking no risk whatever of admitting States which would 
stand still or go backward. 

When that rule had worked out in that way, then it became 
necessary to apply another rule imposed upon us by the necessity 
of the hour. We had to acquire the territory of Louisiana 
against the conscientious scruples and prejudices of President 
Jefferson, in order to round out our country and to grant to us 
the mouth of the Mississippi, essential to the growth, population, 
commerce, and agriculture of those Northwestern States. But 
in acquiring that territory, already settled, we had to compromise 
again with France and compromise with Spain as to the terms of 
concession. Of course, France wanted to look after the French¬ 
men in Louisiana and Spain v,’■anted to take care of her subjects 
in Florida. So treaties were made under which, without regard 
to population, but in conformity to those treaties, the States of 
the Louisiana purchase came in. 

There it was known again that these Territories were rich in 
fruitful soil, rich in irrigating streams, rich in everything in the 
virgin condition of the country which promises population com¬ 
merce, trade, wealth, and prosperity of every kind. 

Then came the dark period of our history, when it was com¬ 
promise again in the admission of States—compromise between 
slavery and freedom. The very able men who were protecting 
the institution of slavery saw that the constantly increasing pop¬ 
ulations in free communities were to people these western areas 
and would bring in, not only to the House of Representatives but 
to the Senate, majorities which would bo hostile to the institu¬ 
tion of slavery. Already in the House of Representatives the 
preponderance of free sentiment had become alarming to the 
slave oligarchy, and they made uxi their minds that their only 
safety vras, without regard to population, to become intrenched 
in the Senate. 

Under that compromise it is curious to see how the different 
States came in. A glance at the dates shows how it worked. 
Maine, in 1820, was offset by Missouri in 1821; Indiana, in 181G, 
5G32 


11 


by Mississippi; Illinois, in 1818, by Alabama; Arkansas, in 1836, 
by Michigiin; Florida by Texas, and California by another South¬ 
ern State. In order to protect themselves it was also provided 
and understood that as these free communities grew, when Texas 
was annexed, Texas might be divided into four Commonwealths, 
which would naturally be on the side of slavery. 

Then came the civil war. Then w^e got out from compromises by 
which there should be a balance of power between freedom and 
slavery in the Senate of the United States; and then came politi¬ 
cal conditions. Then we began to admit States for votes; States 
to pass constitutional amendments; States to get certain legisla¬ 
tion which was regarded by the party in power as essential for 
the country. Under those political conditions West Virginia, 
Nevada, and other States came in. Several of the mountain 
States were admitted under those political conditions in the hope 
or the certainty of votes for the time being without regard to 
the future. 

But, Mr. President, we have now come to a period when none 
of these conditions and none of these considerations exist. We 
are not forming a government now. We are the most powerful 
nation in the world, and consolidated into a nation. We are 
not compromising Isetween slavery and freedom now. That 
question has disappeared forever. We are not acting upon po¬ 
litical considerations now, for there are no pending measures for 
which more votes are needed in the United States Senate—meas¬ 
ures of such magnitude, in the view of the majority of this body, 
that we can risk the whole future of equal State representation 
to get a few votes for the hour. That condition no longer ex¬ 
ists. It has passed away. 

The only condition under which the admission of a State should 
now be thought of or discussed is, regardless of politics, how it 
lines up in population, in the character of that population, in 
area, and in the possibilities of a future with reference to equal 
statehood in the Union. Judged by these considerations, I have 
failed to hear, I have failed to see presented or to hear read, one 
single argument, statement, or item of statistics that for one 
moment justifies the passage of the pending statehood bill and 
the adm’ssion of these States into the Union. 

It is admitted by the Senators who have spoken, so far as they 
have spoken, in favor of the statehood bill that New Mexico and 
Arizona are not up to the standard, but they say that is because 
they are Territories; that if they were created States, population 
would flow in and capital would go in and Arizona and New 
Mexico would speedily become equal to the other great and grow¬ 
ing and populous Nothwestern States, with their splendid futures. 
The difficulty with this argument is that we are presented right 
at its threshold with Oklahoma. Oklahoma has no statehood. 
Oklahoma is under Territorial conditions. But while New Mexico 
has been nearly sixty years in the condition of a Territory, while 
Arizona has been forty years a Territory, Oklahoma, as against 
the sixty and against the forty years, has been only eleven years a 
Territory. Yet Oklahoma in those eleven years has attained four 
times the population of either Arizona or New Mexico in fifty 
years. Oklahoma has five times the wealth of Arizona or New 
Mexico in the fifty years. Oklahoma has ten times all that con¬ 
stitutes a prosperous business community. 

6632 


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Mr. BEVERIDGE. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New 
York vield to the Senator from Indiana? 

Mr.'^DEPEW. I will. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. The Senator from New York has men¬ 
tioned two of the principal claims of those in favor of statehood, 
which are that statehood in itself by some mysterious process 
would increase population and increase the investment of capital. 
The Senator is answering that. Bi^t I think the Senator himself 
can give testimony on that point, and that is the reason why I 
rise to interrupt him. The Senator from New York is not only 
the first orator of our land, but he is also one of those men who is 
justly entitled to the name that is so often used, a captain of in¬ 
dustry, and a man who all his life has had to do with the invest¬ 
ment of large capital. 

I wish to ask the Senator whether in his long and very wude 
experience he ever knew capital to be invested in a place simply 
because it was in a State? I want to ask the Senator whether it 
is not true, as v/e who have nothing to do with capital in a prac¬ 
tical way understand it to be upon theory, that capital invests 
for the dividends to be returned? I want to ask him whether it 
is not true that if mines exist it is quite immaterial whether they 
are on the one side or the other side of a Territorial or a State 
line; that if farms are fertile, streams are full, rainfall adequate, 
and resources abundant at a given place, that is the place to which 
capital goes? Is not that what attracts capital, and not merely 
because some gentleman who wants to be governor wants a dif¬ 
ferent form of government, equally free? I want to call to the 
aid of the Senator’s argument his own personal experience, be¬ 
cause his word upon this subject is not the word of opinion, but 
the word of weight based upon experience. 

Mr. DEPEW. Answering the question of the Senator from 
Indiana, statehood is not the attraction for capital. Statehood is 
not the incentive for enterprises. I know of numberless expedi¬ 
tions of explorations, and a great number of enterprises in the 
course of exploitation or of operation where capitalists have gone 
to Mexico. There are scores of American companies which have 
gone to Mexico and invested their capital under the laws and the 
conditions that prevail in that country. There are scores of 
American companies, with American capital, that have gone to 
the different countries of South America for the building of rail¬ 
roads, for the opening and working of mines, for the running of 
cattle ranches, for every industry in which money can be invested 
with the possibility of large returns. Statehood has nothing to 
do with the capitalist. It is the opportunity. It is the riches that 
may be had. It is the return which is possible upon the invest¬ 
ment. # 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. It is said that trade follows the flag. Then 
capital follows opportunity. 

Mr. DEPEW. Capital follows opportunity. Capital wants to 
be safe, and yet capital takes tremendous risks when there is op¬ 
portunity of gain by investing in these South American countries, 
where it is liable at any moment if not to be seized at least to 
have its operations suspended by revolution. 

Mr. President, how is it that Oklahoma gets on so many times 
more rapidly in everything that constitutes a healthful and pros- 
5G33 


13 


perons commiinity than New Mexico and Arizona—in ten years 
almost ten times as much, if you take it all, as those two Territo¬ 
ries have done in fifty years? Why is it? 

Mr. HOAR. And more than some of the old States. 

Mr. DEPEW. Yes; more than some of the old States. As the 
Senator from Massachusetts says, Oklahoma has increased more 
rapidly than several of the old States. It is because Oklahoma 
has the climate, it has the soil, it has the streams, and it has that 
bounteous flow of rains from heaven and the soil to receive and 
absorb it, ^without which no harvest can come to the husband¬ 
man; that is the reason. 

I know of no picture in the story of settlement, no picture in 
the creation of nations or of States, which reads so like a romance 
of that of the settlement of Oklahoma. I remember how my 
blood was stirred as the accounts fiilled the papers day by day of 
the row of American citizens lined up in every kind of vehicle— 
men, women, and children—held by the Army until the clock 
should strike 12 of the day when the barrier was removed and the 
Indian title was eliminated. And how the moment that the guns 
were fired along that line of hundreds of miles the rush took place 
across the border; and how that night—that night—there were 
thousands of families living under their own vine and fig tree, 
who had located their 160 acres of homestead; and that there 
were 20,000 people in the city of Oklahoma within twenty-four 
hours. There were not only 20,000 people in the city of Okla¬ 
homa, embracing men who had never met before, but there were 
women who had never before had any social relations together, 
strangers, and yet in forty-eight hours they had as Americans an 
American government. In forty-eight hours they had their 
mayor, they had their council, they had their magistrates, they 
had their policemen, they had their jail. 

Mr. BURTON. May I interrupt the Senator? 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New 
York yield to the Senator from Kansas? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. BURTON. Did it ever occur to the Senator that the ad¬ 
vertisement and the method following the advertisement of the 
opening of Oklahoma appealed strongly to the venturesome spirit 
of the American people and did much to bring the people there? 
If any other Territory would have had a like advantage it would 
also have had a population; I mean, if it had been advertised in 
the same way. Is it not true that we go, or we want to go, where 
we are told we shall not? The very fact that settlement was 
held back to a given period of time caused people to flock there 
so as to break over. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Why did they stay? 

Mr. DEPEW. Mr. President, I can appreciate what would 
have been the reverse of the picture of those happy homes in 
Oklahoma if those thousands of families had landed upon the 
alkali plains of Arizona or slept on the cacti of New Mexico. 
[Applause in the galleries.] 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Applause is not permitted in 
the galleries, and it must not be repeated. 

Mr. DEPEW. I can see those happy people finding pasture for 
their stock, finding water for their cattle, finding a soil \vhich 
would yield them support for the future; laying out their school- 
5632 


14 


house here, staking? out their village there, locating the court¬ 
house yonder; looking where the churches were to he of the dif¬ 
ferent denominations, and looking around among the likely peo- 
I)le among them for their members of the legislature, for their 
Delegate in Congress. I can imagine what would have happened 
if those 30,000 people had landed on the alkali plains. I can see the 
cattle dying all around them. I can see them with their parched 
lips and eyes crying to heaven for water that does not exist, and 
they can not get back to the water which they left behind. 

Mr. President, you might advertise the desert of Sahara and 
throw it open to the populations of all the world for all time to 
come, and there would be no rush of those people from southern 
Europe who are now crowding to our ports in order to find home 
and liberty and citizenship. 

Why do not these people go to Nevada? She invites these pop¬ 
ulations. Millions of acres are there awaiting the husbandman; 
millions of acres are there awaiting the plow. But the trouble is 
that through the baked lands of unirrigated alkali the plow will 
not work and water does not exist. It is one of the beneficences, 
as also one of the limitations of Providence, that human beings 
can not live and can not make prosperous communities where har¬ 
vests will not grow and water will not run. 

I have here a little bit of doggerel, which I did not intend to 
read, but which I will read for the benefit of my friend the Sen¬ 
ator from Kansas, and it may be interesting. 

What constitutes a State? 

I am sure my friend the Senator from Kansas, in his eloquent 
trips through that growing Commonwealth which illustrates in 
its own productive power what can be done where nature is be¬ 
neficent, has often thrilled the corn grower and the coal digger of 
Kansas with “ What constitutes a State? ” 

What constitutes a state? 

Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, 

Thick wall, or moated gate; 

Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned; 
***** 

Noi Men, high-minded men, 
***** 

Who know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain. 

So wrote the famous poet. Sir William Jones, a hundred years 
ago. But under this bill the poet of the cactus and alkali with 
broken meter will say: 

What constitutes a state? 

Unbounded acres and unnumbered miles. 

Where harvests will not grow, though nature smiles. 

Where barren mountains and alkali plains 
Deny the toiling settler labor’s gains. 

Where wealth does not accumlate, nor men decay, 

For the soil is parched by night and day. 

And man who knows his rights is up betimes 
To seek his fortune in more genial climes. 

[Laughter.] 

Arizona, Mr. President, has 73,000,000 acres. She has been forty 
years a Territory. She has been promoted by every process by 
which an advertisement can reach a human being who is adven¬ 
turous or has a dollar to invest. Out of her 73,000,000 acres she 
has, after forty years, 255,000 acres of farm land. 

New Mexico has 78,000,000 acres. Slie was captured by Gen¬ 
eral Kearny in 1846, sixty years ago. She had then a poptilation 
6032 


15 


which had been there for nearly three hundred years—a popula¬ 
tion of agriculturalists—and yet in three hundred years of set¬ 
tlement ana sixty years of Territorial condition, with all the 
privileges of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitu¬ 
tion of the United States and the laws which apply to American 
citizenship, out of 78,000,000 acres she has only 327,000 acres under 
cultivation, while Oklahoma in ten years has reduced 6,000,000 
acres to cultivation, against 255,000 acres in Arizona and 327,000 
acres in New Mexico. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. May I ask- 

Mr. BURTON. May I interrupt the Senator from New York 
for a moment? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. BURTON. How much greater is the product of the mines 
of Oklahoma than the product of the mines of New Mexico and 
Arizona? 

Mr. DEPEW. Mining populations do not create States. A 
mining population alone is a shifting population; it is not a set¬ 
tled population. Tombstone, in Arizona, had, when it was a min¬ 
ing center, 12,500 people. The mines gave out, and in a week it 
had 1,200. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. It has 600 now. 

Mr. BURTON. Before the Senator begins, do I understand 
him to take the position that mining is not a stable industry? 
I should be very much pleased indeed if he would give in con¬ 
trast with the figures he has just now given the product of the 
mines of Arizona and New Mexico as against the product of the 
mines of Oklahoma. 

Mr. DEPEW. I do not know, Mr. President, that there are 
any mines in Oklahoma. I know that the wealth produced in 
Oklahoma is nearly ten times as much as the wealth produced in 
Arizona or in New Mexico, with all their mines, their cattle 
industry, their agriculture, and everything else. When you 
speak of mines constituting a State, I point to the history of the 
introduction of Nevada. Nevada was brought in here for politi¬ 
cal reasons. The party in power wanted two votes in the United 
States Senate, and they let Nevada in, and they let in two of the 
most brilliant men who ever were upon this floor. 

Mr. HOAR. They wanted to carry the thirteenth amend¬ 
ment. 

Mr. DEPEW. They wanted Nevada to carry the thirteenth 
amendment. One of those brilliant Senators went from New 
York to be a Senator from Nevada. 

Mr. BURTON. I do not want to interrupt the Senator so as to 
annoy him, and I see that an interruption does not. 

Mr. DEPEW. No; I am very glad to be interrupted. I am 
seeking for information. 

Mr. BURTON. Since the Senator takes the position that min¬ 
ing, which I always thought was one of the great industries of 
the world, does not produce wealth, I wish he would give us, if 
he can, in contrast or in comparison, whichever it may be called, 
the wealth produced from the mines of West Virginia and Penn¬ 
sylvania, stating the proportion to the total products of these 
States and what they have had to do with making those States so 
rich. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Will the Senator from New York permit 
me to interrupt him? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

5632 


16 


Mr. BEVERIDGE. The question of the Senator from Kansas 
is evidently intended to show that Oklahoma has no mines and 
that New Mexico has mines, and that therefore there are more 
resources in New Mexico than in Oklahoma. But it does not 
meet the comparison, even if it could be a comparison, which I 
do not think it can be, for the reason that the committee substi¬ 
tute proposes to make one State out of Oklahoma and Indian 
Territory, and that in the Indian Territory there are very rich 
coal mines, highly developed; mines of iron and mines of marble. 
While I have not the figures directly at hand, I venture the sug¬ 
gestion that the mines of the Indian Territory, which are a part 
of this new State which the committee proposes to make, exceed 
in value even now, under all the adverse circumstances, not 
with a Territorial but with no form of government, those of New 
Mexico. 

Mr. BURTON. May I interrupt the Senator from Indiana? 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Certainly. 

Mr. BURTON. Then I understand the Senator from Indiana 
to contradict the Senator from New York? 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Your understanding is poor, I will say. I 
did not contradict him. 

Mr. BURTON. Your argument contradicts him. I under¬ 
stand that the Senator from Indiana now insists that mines do have 
very much to do with making a State, and that in order to make 
a big, growing, rich State you are going to rest upon the mines 
of the Indian Territory and attach it to Oklahoma. I will state 
the point I am trying to get at. 

I asked the Senator from New York to give us something about 
the wealth of the mines of Arizona and New Mexico. Then when 
he said that mines would not make a State I called attention to 
the mines of West Virginia and Pennsylvania as having more 
to do than any other thing in making those States rich and pros¬ 
perous. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Mr. President, since the Senator addresses 
me, he did not understand me to say that I differed wfith the 
Senator from New York, or that either the Senator from New 
York or myself or any of us rests statehood upon this industry 
or that industry or the other industry; but we rest it upon the 
inherent resources of the Territory and upon the natural condi¬ 
tions which have brought or are sure to bring people there. 
People are what make States, and the only thing resources have 
to do with it is that resources bring the people and resources 
keep the people. 

Now, the Senator from New York is entirely right when he 
says that a mining population, and particularly a mining popula¬ 
tion based upon mines of silver or gold, or even copper, is no sub¬ 
stantial basis for statehood, for the reason that that industry is 
transient, whereas statehood is permanent. 

The other night we had here a debate which, perhaps, lasted for 
two hours. The Senator from Nevada [Mr. Stewart] partici¬ 
pated in that debate. In the course of that debate it appeared 
that Nevada had actually shrunk in population since she had been 
admitted into the Union. The Senator from Nevada said that at the 
time of Nevada’s admission Virginia City had 27,000 people in it, 
and now it has only 4,000 or 5,000, and that the reason for that 
remarkable shrinkage was the fact that the mines had become 
exhausted. 

Now, Mr. President, when we are doing something that will last 
5632 


17 


as long as this earth endures, the Senator from New York I think 
is exactly right, in the light of the history of what are called 
mining camps, when he says that the industry of mining alone 
is no permanent basis for a State. 

Mr. NELSON. Will the Senator from Indiana allow me to 
interrupt him? 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Certainly; I yield to the Senator from 
Minnesota. 

Mr. NELSON. I want to call the Senator’s attention to the 
fact that the number of the people engaged in mining in those 
two Territories is very insignificant. There are only about 7,000 
people of all classes engaged in mining in Arizona and a little 
over 4,000 in New Mexico, and the mining of gold, silver, and 
coal all combined is very limited in New Mexico. 

The only mining industry of any consequence in either of these 
Territories is in Arizona, and that is in reference to copper. The 
gold output and the silver output in Arizona is very limited, and 
in New Mexico it is still more limited. - In New Mexico they have 
a little coal, but even that is limited. 

The mining industry of those two Territories combined does 
not equal to-day the mining industry that is going on within the 
limits of the Indian Territory. There are more people engaged 
in coal mining and in the asphalt and coal industry in the Indian 
Territory to-day than there are engaged in mining of all classes 
in Arizona and New Mexico. 

Mr. BURTON. Then, I understand, if the Senator will allow 
me, that you do claim that mining has very much to do with the 
development of a country? 

Mr, NELSON. I wish to say to the Senator from Kansas that 
one effect of the mining population in Arizona is that they have 
a law (I take it that it is for the benefit of the miners) by which 
they keep saloons and gambling houses and other places of resort 
open day and night, Sundays, and all the year round. I think 
that is one of the incidents that belong to a mining population. 
If it was not for the fact that there are mining camps they 
probably would not have such a law and such license in that 
country. 

Mr. BURTON. I notice, as far as saloons are concerned, that 
they are in a great many States, except my own. But I call the 
attention of the Senator from Indiana to the fact that manufac¬ 
tures and the sources of wealth of West Virginia and Pennsylva¬ 
nia depend upon the mines. 

If you say that Nevada has gone back, I would answer that by 
saying that seventy-five years ago farm lands were worth more 
iifNew England than they are now. They have gone back also. 

Now, another thing, while I am on my feet, if the Senator will 
allow me, I do not believe this country has ever lost anything 
by the admission of Nevada. I do not believe that the general 
legislation of this country has suffered. I believe Nevada has 
contributed her full share toward wise and beneficent legislation 
ever since the State has been admitted into the Union. 

Mr. HOAR. Mr. President, may I ask the Senator if Nevada, 
taking the situation exactly as it is at this moment, would now 
apply for admission as a State, would he vote to admit her? 

Mr. BURTON. I certainly would, Mr. President. I would 
vote to admit all the Territories on this main continent where the 
people want to become States and exercise all the high privileges 
of American citizens. 

5632- 2 


18 


Mr. NELSON. Would the Senator from Kansas vote to admit 
Alaska and Porto Rico at this time? 

Mr. BURTON. Alaska is not a Territory, neither is Porto Rico. 

Mr. NELSON. Oh, yes; Porto Rico is. 

Mr. BURTON. Not in the sense in which New Mexico and 
Arizona are Territories. 

Mr. NELSON. No; not in that sense, I admit. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. I ask the Senator from New York to yield 
to me a minute upon this particular i)oint about Nevada. 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainlv. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. We had all that debate out the other 
night, and of course it is not necessary to go over it again. I do 
no wish to reflect upon Nevada. The rules of the Senate forbid 
it, and I have no disposition to do it, if it is true. But the ques¬ 
tion is this: Is it the carrying out of our democratic form of gov¬ 
ernment—that is to say, the representation of people instead of 
land—that 18,000 voters in Nevada should have as much power in 
deciding all the policies of this country, foreign and domestic, as 
the million or more people in Kansas have? 

Mr. BURTON. If the Senator addresses that question to me, 
if he will allow me- 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Yes. 

Mr. BURTON. I will say, as it bears upon part of the debate 
which has been heretofore had, that in one of the counties of Kan¬ 
sas, in the recent election, less than 200 votes were polled to elect 
a member of the legislature and in another one of the districts 
over 4,000 votes were polled to elect a member of the legisla¬ 
ture. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. I should say that you have a very bad 
apportionment. 

Mr. BURTON. The apportionment is a good and a wise one, 
and everybody in the State believes in it. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Perhaps that throws some light upon the 
question as to whether 18,000 votes in Nevada should have an 
equal voice upon the floor of the Senate with the State of Kansas. 
The point about it is that the whole principle of popular repre¬ 
sentation is at stake in this matter. Where it is based upon an 
industry such as gold mining or otherwise, where it may decrease 
to a proportion that is abhorrent to the sense of reason of every 
man, it is a thing which should give us serious concern before we 
do it, because once done it is done forever. 

Mr. DEPEW. Mr. President, I regret that the Senator from 
Kansas should be taken out of this debate. [Mr. Burton in the 
chair.] I will, however, answer the question of the Senator from 
Kansas, and without attacking Nevada. That is ancient history. 
It emphasizes the fact that when a State is once in the Union it 
is there to stay. Nevada might get to a condition where the only 
population would be her two United States Senators, and she 
would still stay, and those two Senators would neutralize the 
Senator from Kansas and his colleague upon matters which might 
be vital to Kansas and to which these two Senators were opposed. 

As to the question of mining, take a purely mining State and 
what are the prospects of its growth? Nevada is the illustration. 
Nevada had 42,000 in 1870. She had 62,000 in 1880. That was at 
the height of the productive power of the Comstock mines. She 
had 45,000 in 1890 and 42,000 in 1900. 

Now, it is a fact that a State can become prosperous and popu¬ 
lous and grow without mines, but a mining Territory can not 
5632 



19 


grow unless it has agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and va¬ 
ried interests. Senators cite the case of the New England States, 
and the fact that land is worth less in Massachusetts to-day for 
agricultural purposes than it was one hundred years ago. That 
may be true. But Massachusetts is so situated- 

Mr. HOAR.^ I beg the Senator’s pardon. I do not wish to 
unnecessarily interrupt him, but I should like to state the county 
where I dwell is the fourth or fifth county—I have not looked at 
the last census—in the whole Union in the value of its agricultural 
products. There are abandoned farms in Massachusetts on the 
hilltops. For some unexplained reason, probably to get rid of 
malaria, the Puritan settlers of Massachusetts settled on the tops 
of hills. Most of our old country towns where there are hills 
have their old town centers on the very tops of the hills without 
regard to the quality of the land. There are old rocky farms 
that have diminished in value, but to say that the agricultural 
lands in Massachusetts have, as a whole, diminished in value is 
incorrect. They have increased immensely in value by reason of 
their neighborhood to numerous manufacturing towns and cities. 
Vegetables, small fruits, and such things are raised there and 
sold fresh in those towns. 

The statement which the Senator is making, I understand he is 
merelv quoting from other Senators. 

Mr.‘DEPEW. Yes. 

Mr. HOAR. The fact is that the farms v^rhich have diminished 
in value are what are called the hilltop farms, distant from villages. 

Mr. DEPEW. I am very glad of that statement of the Senator 
from Massachusetts, and so I correct my statement as to the farm 
lands of Massachusetts having diminished in value in a hundred 
years. 

Here is Massachusetts, which has no mines. I have just cited 
the case of Nevada, which has been almost constantly decreasing 
in population since the closing of the Comstock lode. Massachu¬ 
setts, with agriculture, with manufactures, and with commerce, 
had a population—lam ghdng round numbers—of 523,000 in 1820; 
of 610.000 in 1830; of 737,000 in 1840; of 994,000 in 1850; of 1,231,000 
in 1860; of 1,457,000 in 1870; of 1,783,000 in 1880; of 2,238,000 in 
1890, and of 2,805,000 in 1900. 

Take the two States which the Senator from Kansas [Mr. 
Burton] cited for illustration, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. 
If Pennsylvania had nothing but her coal mines, if she had no 
fertile soil, if she had no well-watered plains, if she had no vast 
manufacturing interests, made possible because of her agri¬ 
culture, if she had no commerce—and commerce does not come 
from mines; it comes from agriculture and the products of agri¬ 
culture and manufactures—Pennsylvania to-day would consist of 
settlements around the openings of her coal mines in the limited 
portion of her territory—of her anthracite and bituminous fields. 
Pennsylvania would be in the condition these Territories are 
in unless water can be found to irrigate them, and Pennsyl¬ 
vania, outside of the one county where her anthracite coal is and 
the ten counties where her bituminous coal exists, would be a 
desert. She would have no population and she would have no 
growth. 

Mr. President, the point was made here, in his very eloquent and 
able speech, by my friend from Ohio [Mr. Foraker] that the in¬ 
ternal-revenue receipts and the post-office receipts, coming from a 
State or Territory into the Treasury of the United States, were 
5G32 


the measure of its prosperity and the hope for its future; and the 
Senator gave figures. 

Arizona paid last year internal-revenue taxes amounting to 
$61,G98.9C; New Mexico, after sixty j’-ears of existence in the 
country and three hundred years of government, contributed last 
year in internal revenue to the Treasury of the United States the 
magnificent sum of $15,031.22. I emphasize the cents, Mr. Presi¬ 
dent, because they are important in figures like these. [Laugh¬ 
ter.] New York contributed- 

Mr. FORAKER. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burton in the chair). Will 
the Senator from New York permit an interruption? 

Mr. DEPEW. Yes, sir. 

Mr. FORAKER. I have just come into the Cliamber, and I 
understand the Senator has been quoting figures I gave when I 
was addressing the Senate on this subject. 

Mr. DEPEW. I was quoting the figures given by the Senator 
as to the internal-revenue and post-office receipts. 

Mr. FORAKER. Did the Senator state that I stated that the 
total receipts from internal revenue in the Territory of New 
Mexico for the last year were but fifteen thousand dollars and 
some cents? 

Mr. DEPEW. No; I said the Senator gave the total for the 
two Territories, and then I found in the only statistics I could 
reach what were the returns for Arizona, and when I ascertained 
them, there was left but $15,031.22 for New Mexico. 

Mr. FORAKER. The Senator is entirely mistaken in making 
that statement. If I can find the place where I made that quota¬ 
tion, I will ask him to allow me to make a correction. I do not 
know how it comes that he has been misled as to what I said. I 
remember that I gave the respective internal-revenue receipts 
and the post-office receipts from New Mexico and from Arizona 
sei3arately. I now turn to where I made the statement in my 
speech, and I find I stated that the internal-revenue receipts from 
New Mexico, as shown by the official statistics, were, in 1890, 
$37,671.19, and in 1901 the internal-revenue receipts from New 
Mexico amounted to $58,609.31. 

I called attention, while making that statement, to the fact 
that the war taxes had doubtless increased the internal-revenue 
receipts for the last year, which I quoted, somewhat; and that that 
difference did not therefore represent the regular increase, and 
when I quoted the statistics in that respect as to Arizona I said 
that the internal-revenue receipts from i^izona in 1890 amounted 
to $28,416.06, and in 1902 to $129,267.95. 

Mr. DEPEW. Those are post-office receipts. 

Mr. FORAI^R. I beg pardon; they are. 

The intemal-revenue receipts from Arizona for 1892 were 
$17,965.90, and for 1901 they were $61,698.96. And the internal- 
revenue receipts for New Mexico were not $15,000 for last year, 
but $58,609.31, as reported to me when these figures were taken 
from the census returns. 

Mr. DEPEW. Well, Mr. President, accepting, as of course I 
accept, the figures of the Senator from Ohio, I will say that I got 
the figures which I quote from the compilation in the Eagle Al¬ 
manac and the World Almanac, and I am using them both. 

I find against $58,000, if you please, for New Mexico and $61,000 
for Arizona, that here is Illinois with $54,000,000; Indiana with 
$25,000,000—and neither of these States has the age of settlement 
6632 


21 


of ^ew Mexico—Kentucky with $21.000,000—that is an old 
btate—Pennsylvania with $32,000,000; Wisconsin with $10,000,000; 
California and Nevada—and of course California contributed the 
most of it—$3,785,000; and Connecticut and Rhode Island, $3,000,- 
000. Even Hawaii has about $20,000 more than New Mexico, and 
$10,000 more than Arizona. 

^yhen you come to post-office receipts, which are in a measure 
an index of population, an index of the intelligence of a people, 
of their schools, their colleges, their commerce, and their inter¬ 
nal trade, we find these astonishing results: The post-office re¬ 
ceipts for Arizona for the year ending June 30, 1902, amounted 
to $129,267.95, and the post-office receipts forNew Mexico forthe- 
same period amounted to $93,684.17. 

I have here the post-office receipts of 51 cities of the United 
States, which run from $11,000,000 in New York to $218,000 in 
Racine, Wis.; $213,000 in Allegheny, Pa., and $314,000 in Svra- 
cuse, N. Y. In every one of these 51 cities the post-office receipts 
are larger than, in fact are more than double, those of New Mex¬ 
ico and nearly double those of Arizona. 

But here is a significant comparison as to Oklahoma. We have, 
in making these figures, to return constantly to the years of set¬ 
tlement, and so I have to repeat that New Mexico has been in the 
Union sixty years and under Territorial government for fifty-one 
years, while Oklahoma has been only thirteen years open to set¬ 
tlement, and has had a Territorial government only about twelve 
years. With twelve years against sixty, the post-office receipts 
from social letters, commercial letters, trade letters, letters of 
activity, which make a State, were in New Mexico $93,000 and in 
Oklahoma $267,000, almost three times as much, and Oklahoma 
only twelve years in a Territorial condition. 

For forty years Arizona has been exploiting her mines, having 
her cities increase 10,000 to 12,000 almost in a night and run 
down from 12,000 to, 600 almost in a night. She has been for 
forty years open to the most favorable settlement, and exploited 
by the most enterprising people in the United States, and yet her 
post-office receipts last year were only $129,000 against Oklahoma’s 
$267,000, after being only twelve years in a Territorial condition. 

Mr. FORAKER. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the Senator from New 
York permit an interruption? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. FORAKER. I interrupt the Senator, if he is willing that 
I may, only to ask him a question as to whether or not the figures 
he gives as to Oklahoma show the receipts for any but the Presi¬ 
dential offices? 

Mr. DEPEW. That is all I could get—the Presidential offices. 

Mr. FORAKER. That is also true as to Arizona and New 
Mexico. The receipts are only those from Presidential offices. 
The fourth-class offices are not reported at all. That would swell 
the figures somewhat; but then the figures for Oklahoma would, 

I suppose, be correspondingly increased. I did not know what 
analysis the Senator had made of the figures. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. The proportion would be maintained. 

Mr. FORAKER. It would probably be maintained. 

Mr. DEPEW. Mr. President, in discussing a question I get 
somewhat off from my line of argument with these interruptions. 

There is one point which has been dwelt upon here, which, in 
my studies, seems to me to grow in importance. It seems to me to 
5833 



22 


indicate that there has been another hand in the preparation of this 
bill than the people who are interested in statehood. This bill 
received little or no consideration in tlie other House. It was pre¬ 
pared by the interests which wanted statehood given to these 
Territories immediately, whatever those interests were. ^ It 
passed the House in that sort of general consideration which 
sends so much of undigested legislation to the Senate- 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair must remind the 
Senator that it is not in order to comment upon the action of the 
other House. 

Mr. DEPEW. Am I commenting on the other House? 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. It so appeared to the Chair. 

Mr. DEPEW. Well, I beg pardon. I was going to pay the 
House a compliment. I was going to remark in regard to the 
House that it passed an enormous amount of legislation, a pro¬ 
digious amount of legislation, which it gets from its committees 
and passes to the Senate, such volumes of biUs as to indicate on 
that side a vast capacity of statesmanship for construction on the 
spur of the moment. [Laughter.] I hope I am now within par¬ 
liamentary lines. And in grasping these colonial, continental, 
internal, and external matters, it has prepared and sent to us this 
bill, as to which our Democratic fnends will not permit us to add 
a dot, to cross a “ t,” or make any suggestions whatever. 

The one question in which the good people of this country are 
more interested than in any other is Mormonism in the Territo¬ 
ries which it is proposed to admit to statehood. It was supposed 
wiien the Edmunds bill passed, making it a felony to perform 
polygamous marriages or to live in a polygamous state, that the 
main prop was taken away from Mormonism, that the Mormon 
Church would gradually decay, and that it would die out with 
its professors of the hour. But the Mormon Church has increased 
enormously since that time—increased in numbers and in power. 
Mormon missionaries are all over the world. They are gathering 
recruits through the whole of the Scandinavian country, and are 
now successfully invading Germany and southern Eurox)e. Noth¬ 
ing so illustrates the power of concentration or the ability of con¬ 
centrated power as the history and the present dominance of the 
Mormon Church. 

There are 7,000 Mormons in Arizona—one-twelfth of its white 
population—in other 'words, one in every twelve of its people 
is a Mormon. 

The Democrats of Arizona, the Republicans of Arizona, the 
Populists or the Silverites of Arizona are moved according to the 
conscience and the judgment of the individual citizen. There are 
divisions between the two great parties and divisions in the minor 
organizations which are separate from or occasionally act 'with 
the two great parties; but here is a solid vote, controlled by one 
mind, controlled by one hand. The spiritual adviser, who is also 
the spiritual and the temporal ^ide of this Mormon population, 
looks not to the interests of this party or to the welfare of that 
party, but he says to the Democratic leader, “ What will you do 
in protecting Moi-monism?” and to the Republican leader, 
“What will you do in protecting Mormonism?” We all know 
that if there is any fallibility in the world it is the judgment at 
election time of the political leader of any party. 

Mr. PATTERSON. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the Senator from New 
York permit an interruption? 

6633 


23 


Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. PATTERSON. The Senator from New York suggested 
that the Mormon Church, through its apostles or leaders, pro¬ 
pounds to the Republican party the question, “ What will it do to 
protect Mormonism?” and to the Democratic party, “ What will 
it do to protect Mormonism?” I want to ask the Senator from 
New York, if that is true, whether or not the Republican party 
did not make the highest bid two years ago and pledge itself to 
do more to protect Mormonism than did the Democratic party? 
If what the Senator says is true, then the Republican party got 
only what it bargained for two years ago. 

Mr.,DEPEW. The answer to that Mr. President, is that both 
parties probably made every bid that was possible, but the Mor¬ 
mons trusted the Republicans. [Laughter.] Then the Mormon 
leader, the shrewdest and most capable of leaders, knew that in 
the trend of civilization, in the spread of colleges and schools, and 
in the growth of education, the Republican party was likely to 
grow and the Democratic party otherwise; and that he had 
better make his bargain on that side, as there would be more 
permanence to it. 

Mr. PATTERSON. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the Senator from New 
York permit an interruption? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. PATTERSON. Mr. President, I do not know how true 
the reports of this bargain may be, but out in our country two 
years ago there was a common report, which was generally be¬ 
lieved, that a bargain to the following import and the following 
effect was made: That the leading Mormon apostles came East 
and had an interview with the high officers of the Republican 
party two years ago. At that time a gentleman by the name of 
Smoot spoke about being a candidate for the United States Sen¬ 
ate. As a result of the visit it was suggested, “ Turn Utah over 
to the Republicans, recede from your "silver heresies, come into 
the Republican fold, let Mr. Smoot ignore his ambitions this 
year, and several things will occur. First, we will give you a 
Mormon for governor.” If that was the bargain, it was carried 
out. because they have got a Mormon for governor. 

Mr. SPOONER. They have a majority, have they not? 

Mr. PATTERSON. Next, Mr. Smoot did retire from the field, 
but became a candidate this year in accordance with the pro¬ 
gramme, and he has been elected to the United States Senate. 
Next, that there was some understanding or agreement that the 
Republican majority of the Senate was to see to it that no anti¬ 
polygamy amendment to the Constitution was proposed. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Was Mr. Smoot one of the parties to the 
agreement? 

Mr. PATTERSON. It is said that Mr. Smoot was one of them. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. With whom did the Mormon leaders make 
the agreement? 

Mr. PATTERSON. Oh, I do not want to mention names. You 
know who the high officials of the Republican party are. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Who are the high officials of whom you 
speak? 

Mr. PATTERSON. I prefer not to mention names, Mr. Presi¬ 
dent. Whether the agreement was made or not, we know that 
the promises upon the part of the Republican leaders up to this 
time have been faithfully carried out. Whether they will be car- 
5G32 


24 


ried out in the next session of Congress of course remains to be 
seen when the credentials of the newly elected Senator from Utah 
will be presented. We know that Utah immediately reversed its 
very great anti-Repnblican majority and came pell mell—horse, 
foot, and dragoons—over into the Republican fold. 

Mr. DEPEVV. Mr. President, upon that very point I wish to 
say that if there was any bargain I do not know anything about 
it. The details of it have been revealed to the Senator from 
Colorado, but I was in New York at the time and was not taken 
into the inner council, if there was an inner council, or into the 
consultation, if there was a consultation; but I call the attention 
of the Senator from Colorado to the fact that this bill has nothing 
in it to xn’ohibit polygamy in these Territories when they are ad¬ 
mitted as States. It has been demonstrated here that the clause 
which is pretended to accomplish the purx30se of prohibiting 
polygamous marriage and polygamous living to be put into the 
constitutions of these States is a sham. It has been shown here 
that under this provision in these constitutions polygamous mar¬ 
riages can take place and there can be no punishment. 

Now, notwithstanding that that has been showm, there has 
been no proposition from any Democratic Senator or any Demo¬ 
cratic source that under any circumstances the antipolygamous 
provision shall be strengthened. On the contrary, when that sub¬ 
ject was under discussion here a few days ago, my friend the 
senior Senator from Colorado [Mr. Teller] , instead of saying 
“ Yes, I want the provision in regard to polygamy made just as 
strong as human language can draw it,” said there was no need 
of such a provision, because, if I remember him rightly, the anti- 
polygamous people of those States would never permit this insti¬ 
tution to flourish after the State was admitted into the Union. 

Mr. TELLER. Vfill the Senator from New York allow a sug¬ 
gestion? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. TELLER. If the Senator from New York and his friends 
will fix a day when we can vote on the bill we wull all agree to 
join him in strengthening the antipolygamy provision. 

[At this point Mr. Depew yielded the floor for the day.] 


Friday, February 13, 1903. 

Mr. DEPEW. Mr. President, when I was interrupted by a 
motion for an executive session, I was discussing the question of 
Mormonism in its relation to the pending statehood bill. I was 
saying that the statehood bill had made no provision which was 
effective in the requirement which it exacted from these i 3 roposed 
States when they came into the Union in reference to the pre¬ 
vention of polygamy and polygamous marriages. It seems from 
the character of this provision and from the facts that it failed 
utterly to meet the case, that the fine Italian hand of the Mormon 
apostles had been at work in the preparation of the measure, and 
that the influence, the concentrated influence, of the Mormon 
hierarchy could be seen in the determined eff’ort to prevent any 
amendment which would perfect completely the exclusion of 
polygamy in the constitutions of these three proposed States. 

Under those circumstances, Mr. President, it becomes exceed¬ 
ingly interesting to ascertain what is the attitude of the Mormon 
Church and what is its influence wherever it has numbers which 
it can vote. 

5032 



25 


Senators npon the other side claim that there is no necessity to 
limit in those constitutions the power of the States which are to 
come into the Union to deal with this question. They claim that 
the sentiment in those States, without any provisions being placed 
in their constitutions by act of Congress, would be all powerKil 
to enact such laws as would prevent polygamy or polygamous 
marriages in these various States. 

Mr. President, in the Territory of Arizona at present one-twelfth 
of the population is attached to the Mormon Church. If we could 
carry that number into the State of New York, it would consti¬ 
tute GOO,000 people in that State who would belong to and be un¬ 
der the control of the Mormon Church. 

It is not disputed by anyone that the votes of the members 
of the klormon Church are absolutely controlled by the central 
hierarchy of that organization. I want to say that in the close 
politics of the State of New York, if there were 600,000 of that 
population, representing something over 100,000 votes, as it would, 
which could be controlled by one mind, by one purpose, appeal¬ 
ing first to this party and then to that, they would be enabled to 
exact terms from both parties for their own protection, for such 
legislation as they wanted and for the prohibition of such legisla¬ 
tion as they did not desire. Everyone knows how in the election 
of members of a legislature, if there is a solid body of votes suffi¬ 
cient to control a district, both parties are willing to pledge their 
candidates to that vote for whatever that vote desires. 

I have here an address delivered on the fiftieth year of Mormon- 
ism, in 1880, by the ablest and most eloquent bishop of that church. 
It was delivered at a great convention held at Salt Lake City for 
the purpose of celebrating the triumph of Mormonism, its past, 
its then present, and its future. The bishop said: 

Like a grain of mustard seed was the truth planted in Zion; and it is des¬ 
tined to spread through all the world. Our church has been organized only 
fifty years, and yet behold its wealth and power. This is our year of jubilee. 
We look forward with i>erfect confidence to the day when we will hold the 
reins of the United States Government. That is our present temporal aim; 
after that wo expect to control the Continent. 

When told that such a scheme seemed rather visionary, in view 
of the fact that Utah could not gain recognition as a State, Bishop 
Lunt replied: 

Do not be deceived; we are looking after that. 

We intend to have Utah recognized as a State. To-day we hold the bal¬ 
ance of political ^wer in Idaho, we mile Utah absolutely, and in a very short 
time we will hold the balance of power in Arizona and Wyoming. A few 
months ago President Snow, of St. George, set out with a band of priests for 
an extensive tour through Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, 
Idaho, and Arizona to proselyte. We also expect to send missionaries to 
some i)arts of Nevada, and we design to plant colonies in Washington Terri¬ 
tory. 

In the past six months— 

And remember this was twenty-two years ago— 

We have sent— 

I call attention to that. I call attention to the fact that these 
are not voluntary immigrants. I call attention to the fact that 
these are not colonists moving, as they do in those Western 
States, in prairie schooners from the farmhouses to settle for 
themselves after they have found a proper location, but that they 
are sent by the church in those largo and compact bodies—not 
colonists primarily, not to secure farms primarily, not to make a 
living, for they have a living already and already have farms, 
but in order to colonize their followers in sufficient numbers and 
5632 


26 


in sufficiently compact bodies to control the legislation of the 
Territory. So I repeat from the bishoi)’s sermon: 

In the past six months we have sent more than 3,0(X) of our people down 
through the Sevier Valley to settle in Arizona, and the movement still pro¬ 
gresses. All this will huild up for us a political power, which will in time 
compel the homage of the demagogues of the country. Our vote is solid, 
and will remain so. It will be thrown where the most good will be accom¬ 
plished for the church. Then, in some political crisis, the two present polit¬ 
ical parties will bid for our support. Utah will then be admitted as a polyga¬ 
mous State, and the other Territories we have peacefully subjugated will be 
admitted also. We will then hold the balance of power, and will dictate to 
the country. In time our principles, which are of sacred origin, will spread 
throughout the United States. We possess the ability to turn the political 
scale in any particular community we de.sire. Our people are obedient. 
When they are called by the church they promptly obey. They sell their 
houses, lands, and stock, and remove to any part of the countiy the church 
may direct them to. You can imagine the results which wisdom may bring 
about with the assistance of a church organization like ours. 

Mr. RAWLINS. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New 
York yield to the Senator from Utah? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. RAWLINS. Can the Senator give me the name of the au¬ 
thor of the address from which he has been reading? 

Mr. DEPEW. Bishop Lunt. 

Mr. RAWLINS. Can the Senator inform me at what place 
that sermon was supposed to have been delivered? 

Mr. DEPEW. According to this pamphlet, it was delivered to 
celebrate the fiftieth anniversary, the jubilee, of Mormonism. 

Mr. RAWLINS. At what place? 

Mr. DEPEW. The pamphlet does not state at what place. 

Mr. RAWLINS. I think it is but fair to the Senator to say that 
that address is in its authorship fictitious; that there is, I think, 
no bishop of that name in the Mormon Church; certainly none 
that I ever heard of. But I have heard before of the address, and 
I am quite sure it is fictitious because it describes a condition 
which is impossible. No Mormon bishop would talk about send¬ 
ing 3,000 colonists through the Sevier Valley into Arizona, because 
it is a route that is utterly impossible. Besides, I am quite sure 
that is a fictitious address prepared by some one to disclose his 
idea of the purposes of the Mormon Church. I think the Senator 
has been imposed upon; and I thought it but just to call his atten¬ 
tion to that fact. 

Mr. DEPEW. Mr. President, I would not under any circum¬ 
stances quote from a sermon which I did not believe had been 
delivered, or state beliefs of the Mormon Church which I did not 
suppose were its beliefs. 

Tliis pamphlet has been gotten out by the League for Social 
Service, of New York, under the sign manual and responsibility 
of Rev. Josiah Strong, D. D., one of the ablest clergymen of the 
Presbyterian Church, and the author of two books, one of them 
called “Our Country,” and the other “The New Era;” which 
are amongst the most valuable contributions to the statistics 
which mark the growth and progress of the United States. 

Mr. RAWLINS. I have not any doubt of the belief of the 
Senator that he was reading an address which had actually been 
delivered by some prominent Mormon official, but the prominent 
churchmen in the Mormon Church are the president of the 
church, two councillors, and the quorum of twelve apostles. 
The bishops are really subordinate officers, having jurisdiction 
only in small localities—wards. The occasion which is described 
5(i:j2 


27 


there would have given the matter such prominence that if snch 
an address had been delivered I am sure we would have heard of 
it. Besides, that has been- 

Mr. DEPEW. Twenty-two years ago. 

Mr. RAWLINS. I know that address has been repudiated 
^’’ears ago; and I do not think any non-Mormon familiar with the 
situation, however much he may be opposed to the purposes of 
the Mormon Church politically or otherwise, would be willing to 
ascribe that to them. 

Mr. DEPEW. I should like to ask the Senator whether, in his 
opinion, the Mormon Church would repudiate what the bishop is 
here alleged to have said? 

Mr. RAWLINS. The Mormon Church organ has, I think, re¬ 
pudiated that sermon and the correctness of its statements. Of 
course, some prominent Mormon leaders have given expression 
to the idea that theirs was to become the paramount church, and 
things of that sort; but I think some individual has prepared that 
address as exemplifying what he conceived to be the purposes of 
the Mormon Church. 

**•»**»* 

I have already stated the influence of the leaders over the Mor¬ 
mon people gl’o^ving out of the original condition in which they 
were found. Some of the leaders are disposed to exercise their 
power in political affairs. There is an increasing number of Mor¬ 
mons, however, who claim their independence in political matters, 
who resent such interference and who will not obey the dictates 
of the leaders. Many Republicans, if they were told by their lead¬ 
ing churchmen to vote the Democratic ticket, would not do it, and 
many Democrats, if told to vote the Republican ticket, would not 
do it. 

Many others who have been in the habit of taldng counsel upon 
various matters, feeling in a degree dependent upon the church 
leaders—their organization being a sort of religious paternal gov¬ 
ernment in the past—would do it. Their influence in the way of 
controlling elections, where elections are close between the par¬ 
ties, is very ^eat. 

The conditions will be the same in Arizona that they are now 
in Wyoming. The Senators from Wyoming know whether or 
not Wyoming ought or ought not to be in the Union by reason 
of that condition. I take it that everybody in Wyoming would 
say that they preferred to be a State with a considerable percent¬ 
age of Mormon population there than to be in the condition of a 
Territory. 

All we could do in this connection in regard to any provision 
in the constitution of a State forbidding polygamy, re^ilating 
the sale of intoxicating liquors, or making any domestic State 
regulation would be futile, unless approved by a prevailing pub¬ 
lic sentiment in that State which would demand its enforcement. 
You may put a provision upon the statutes or you may put it in 
the constitution of a State, and if the sentiment of the people is 
against its enforcement it will be a dead letter. 

When this question came up in the other House my position 
there was this: I said, if it is necessary to put a provision in the 
constitution of the State of Utah providing for the punishment 
of polygamy, Utah is not prepared for statehood, because such a 
provision will be idle unless the sentiment of the community is 
such as to put it into effect. If the sentiment in the State is in 
favor of the suppression of polygamy it wiU be suppressed by the 
6G32 ' 


28 


State law withoiit any reference to the State constitution. If the 
sentiment is in favor of the establishment of polygamy a pro¬ 
hibitory provision in the constitution is nugatory and idle. It is 
simply making a declaration which is of no value upon the funda¬ 
mental law, which is merely declaratory, if it has any effect at 
all, of the unfitness of the people for admission into the Union. 
It does not reach the evils which are complained of. It is not, in 
my judgment, at this time, a question of polygamy. 

* * * * * * * 

Utah has had troubles, and will continue to have some trouble 
on account of this church; but what are we going to do about it? 
It does not do any good, in my judgment, to stand here and ar¬ 
raign the entire people, to brand every Mormon as a slave, for 
that is an unjust accusation. When you do that, you solidify 
those who would aid you in bringing about the very condition 
which you desire to see established. Whenever external force is 
employed against a people, arraigning them, their church, and 
their faith, it solidifies them, and you are unable to make any 
impression upon them whatsover. 

* it a * * * * 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Will the Senator from Utah pardon me? 
Would the Senator suggest, along that line of argument, that 
nothing at all should be put in the enabling act concerning polyg¬ 
amy if it were futile? 

Mr. RAWLINS. That was my precise contention in the House 
ten years ago when the question came up as to the insertion of a 
provision in the constitution. I said then that the provision 
which was inserted as I remember on motion of Judge Powers of 
Vermont, that polygamous and plural marriages should be for¬ 
bidden, was absolutely useless and idle; that if the public senti¬ 
ment in Utah was not in favor of the suppression of polygamy, 
that that provision would not lead to its suppression; that if the 
public sentiment was in favor of affording protection to those who 
became polygamists or lived in unlawful cohabitation, that pro¬ 
vision would have no terror for them; and that after all, whatever 
you might put in the State constitution, you would have to rely 
upon the imblic sentiment in the local community for its enforce¬ 
ment, and if it was in favor of the suppression of polygamy the 
legislature would provide laws against it and those laws would 
be enforced and such a provision in the constitution would be 
unnecessary. 

So, I say now, in regard to Arizona. If you insert such a clause 
as is now in, or if you enact a penal code, if you please, contain¬ 
ing all the necessary qualifications and exceptions to define the 
offense, and make it self-executing, so far as the provisions of the 
constitution are concerned, what does it amount to if the Mor¬ 
mons are in control and they are determined to have polygamy 
and elect the prosecuting officers and the judges, and sit upon the 
grand jury and the petit jury. If you are going to have a pro¬ 
vision which will be of any effect to you at all, you will have to 
go further than any Senator has proposed. 

You will have to define polygamy and all its kindred offenses 
as you would define them in a penal code. You will have to pro¬ 
vide some method by which no person favoring the inhibited 
practice shall sit upon grand or petty juries or be elected to the 
bench or be elected to the office of prosecuting attorney. You 
can not do that. It comes back to the original proposition: Are 
these people fit to be admitted into the Union as a State? If so, 

5032 


29 


why insert anything which on its face brands them as unfit and 
yet which will be futile so far as accomplishing any good is con¬ 
cerned? 

Mr. STEW ART. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New 
York yield to the Senator from Nevada? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. STEWART. Mr. President, I think this discussion is un¬ 
fortunate. Much is said about the Declaration of Independence. 
It has been regarded as a great step in human progress. I think 
that other declaration, in the Constitution of the United States, 
w’-hich guarantees to every citizen of the United States the right 
to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, 
is, if possible, more important than any declaration which pre¬ 
ceded it. 

***■»**» 

_ I regret that such a question should be discussed here; that re¬ 
ligion should be brought into this discussion. It has nothing to 
do with polygamy. I regret that sectarianism has been dragged in¬ 
to the question of admitting a State into the Union. It seems to 
me it is wrong in this body. We ought to be above such consid¬ 
erations. 

* * * * * * * 

Senators talk of Nevada. Nevada needs no defense. Nevada 
has added more to the commerce of the country than any of the 
Western States, except perhaj^s California. Colorado perhaps 
comes next. Nevada has produced about eight hundred millions 
of gold and silver. She has taken from the Government nothing. 
She has been no expense and no drawback. She has paid her own 
expenses. But her progress has been slow. The reasons for it 
are obvious. Agriculture could be conducted only by irrigation, 
and the various beautiful valleys over the State were a long dis¬ 
tance from transportation. The main industry—mining—was 
cut down by the demonetization of silver. It took time to build 
up Nevada. Thank God, it is being built up rapidly now. Every 
valley is being invaded by hardy settlers. New mines are being 
opened everywhere, and there is more agricultural land in Nevada 
w^hich will be developed and make homes for men than there is 
in very many States of this Union. I can name several States 
combined which would not begin to have as much. 

Now, of course, you must wait a little for it. Nevada did not 
ask to be admitted into the Union. You can not blame her peo¬ 
ple. It is not fair to talk about her in that way. A year before 
her admission the legislature authorized a vote to be taken on 
the question whether we would come into the Union as a State. 
It was voted down almost unanimously. 

* * * * * * ■» 

Now, why speak of those people as if they had committed some 
crime? If they had not given up polygamy, it would be different. 
But in this question of States, why bring them in collaterally and 
discuss their conduct? Outside of polygamy, they compare favor¬ 
ably with the conduct of the Puritans or any other people who 
ever landed upon these shores. If you go and see their homes, see 
their thrift, see their industry, see their domestic happiness, you 
will not have it in your heart to raise your hand or your voice 
against them. 

* * * * * * * 


5632 


30 


In Utah yon had yonr prosecnting attorneys and yon were 
greatly troubled abont polygamy. Yon have admitted Utah as 
a State, and the tronble is over. So it will be when yon give the 
American people the right of self-government nnder the Declara¬ 
tion of Independence and nnder that higher declaration which 
allows every man to worship God according to the dictates of his 
own conscience. It has inspired a sentiment in this country that 
will prevent any injnrions element from entering into the gov¬ 
ernment of the people. Crime will be reprobated and driven to 
hide its head and trnth, jnstice, and progress will prevail. The 
time is not far distant when these Territories that you so much 
condemn to-day v/ill be proud States. You yourselves will live 
long enough to boast of them on the Fourth of July. There is no 
doubt about it, particularly the Senator from New York [Mr. 
Depew] , as he is in the habit of making Fourth of July orations. 

Mr. DUBOIS. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New 
York yield to the Senator from Idaho? 

Mr. "DUBOIS. I will not interrupt the Senator unless he is en¬ 
tirely satisfied to have me do so. 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

IMr. DUBOIS. I will not take very much time. 

Mr. DEPEW. I have become accustomed to it. 

Mr. DUBOIS. I repeat my observation, with entire sincerity, 
that I will not interrupt the Senator unless it is agreeable to him. 

Mr. DEPEW. It is entirely agreeable. The Senator comes 
from a college that makes it agreeable. 

Mr. DUBOIS. Thank you. 

I doubt very much whether gentlemen on the other side who 
are proposing some special legislation in regard to polj^gamy are 
serious. I do not think they are. I think they are simply trying 
to put some amendments on this bill which may defeat it. 

Now, I will make this proposition to them: If you will allow 
this bill to be put on the post-office appropriation bill, I will ac¬ 
cept the Idaho constitution relating to elections as an amendment, 
and allow you to prescribe that Arizona and New Mexico shall 
put into their constitutions the test oath of Idaho before they are 
admitted to statehood. In doing this I will not run counter to 
tlie good judgment or the wishes of the people of Idaho, one- 
fourth of whom are Mormons. 

* * * * * * * 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Will the Senator from New York permit 
me? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Concerning the proposition of the Senator 
from Idaho, it is perhaps proper that I should speak. 

I have never questioned the sincerity of a Senator upon this 
floor, and I never expect to do so. If the Senator is anxious to 
have this antipolygamy clause put on this bill or any bill that 
may be passed, why does he ask a condition? Why does he say, 
“ I am willing to purchase the attachment of the statehood bill to 
an appropriation bill by conceding an antipolygamy amendment? ’ ’ 

Mr. DUBOIS. Does the Senator want me to answer him? 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Yes. 

Mr. DUBOIS. For the reason that it is perfectly apparent to 
everyone that, so far as the Senator from Indiana is concerned, 
we will never have a vote on the statehood proposition; and I 
533:2 


31 


simply took this method of informing him that, in my judgment, 
we will have a vote on it upon an appropriation bill, and I antici¬ 
pate it in advance and say that I am ready for this amendment. 
I am not anxious for the amendment and do not want it, because 
it is not necessary. Polygamy is dead and can not be made more 
dead. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. If that is so, Mr. President, there was no 
use of the Senator putting forth his proposition to barter. He 
said some two or three weeks ago with great earnestness that a 
vote was to be had, and so forth; and we had a debate that after¬ 
noon, which it is not necessary here to repeat. But if the Senator 
again repeats that he is going to have a vote in the extraordinary 
way now proposed, why should he put forth his proposition to 
barter upon this question? 

The Senator made a clear and powerful sjTeech the other day 
to the effect that some legislation as an antipolygamy amendment 
to this or any bill was not necessary because polygamy was no 
longer practiced. The Senator from Utah [Mr. Rawlins] said 
to-day, in his usually clear way of speaking, that there was not 
any use of adopting even what is in the omnibus bill on this sub¬ 
ject. 

Now, if this be so, and if the Senator is going to have an attach¬ 
ment of a statehood measure to an appropriation bill, why does 
he put forward this proposition to barter or to purchase that at¬ 
tachment by a thing which he says is not necessary because it no 
longer exists? 

Now, then, I will put this question to the Senator or any person 
representing the bill. If we want an antipolygamy amendment 
as strong as can be drawn, as strong as perhaps the moral senti¬ 
ment of the people of the United States thinks should be drawn, 
why quibble about it at all? Why not go on record right now 
as saying, “ Yes, here and now, without ifs and ands, we accept 
anything you can draw.” That is the question. 

Sir. DEPEW. Mr. President, I listened with great interest to 
the speech of the Senator from Utah [Mr. Rawlins] and also to 
the speech of the Senator from Nevada [Mr. Stewart]. I find 
that everyone who apologizes for the Mormon Church is in favor 
of this statehood bill. That is one of the curious developments 
of this discussion. I would not criticise Nevada, and I am sorry 
that her distinguished Senators have left the Chamber; but in 
the decadence of that State from a population of 62,000 down to 
42,000 in 1900 I am glad, and I know the country will be, to be 
assured that now there are multitudes of farmers pouring into 
her valleys and that in a short time she will line up alongside of 
New York in population and production. 

But, sir, the best contribution that Nevada has made to the 
wealth of the country has been the two Senators whom she has 
kept here for a quarter of a century. 

When I heard my friend from Nevada spealring in that glow¬ 
ing and patriarchal way of the pleasures he enjoyed in Mormon 
families fifty years ago, and as he passed from the capital to 
Nevada, what comfort, what peace, what family relations, what 
observance of every family requirement by the father and 
mother and children he witnessed, and how pleased he was 
with it, I could not help recalling a lecture I once heard by 
Artemus Ward, that great humorist, nearly forty years ago, de¬ 
livering his lecture then upon Utah, which was to us in the East 
5632 


32 


an unknown country. This is what I remember of his visit to a 
Mormon family of whom he spoke in much the same glowing 
terms as did the Senator from Nevada. He said; 

Having delivered a lecture in Salt Lake City, I received a note from a 
Mormon widow saying that she was greatly bereaved and wishing me to call 
upon her in the family circle. As I entered the parlor shedield out to me her 
lily-white hand—seven teen of them. [Laughter.] 

Now, this patriarchal relation is one which has been condemned 
as no other institution that has existed among any sect in the 
United States has been. 

I thoroughly agree with all that has been said by the Senator 
from Nevada on tlie question of religious freedom and religious 
toleration. Every man and every woman in this country has a 
right to any creed which they choose to adopt and any creed 
which they choose to profess. They have a right to practice 
their religion anywhere and everywhere so long as that religion 
in its practice does not strike at the foundations of the family 
and at the morality of the State. 

There can be a so-called religion, sir, which steps beyond the 
bounds of religious freedom and of religious toleration. There 
can be a so-called religion, sir, which can be made a cloak for 
immorality, which can be made a cloak for crime, which can 
be made a cloak for the purpose of breaking up the familj^ cir¬ 
cle, which can be made a cloak for the degradation of woman¬ 
hood and for the corruption of childhood. 

Any law which permits, or any law which does not prohibit and 
punish penally, a religion of that kind is unworthy of a free 
country and of a free people. We stand, as the Senator from 
Nevada [Mr. Stewart] in one part of his speech has said, for ab¬ 
solute freedom of conscience and absolute toleration of religion; 
but it must be religion, and not immorality, not crime. 

Mr. President, why this sensitiveness on the X'^art of the advo¬ 
cates of this bill about immediately divorcing themselves from 
Mormonism? I take issue with my friend from Utah [Mr. Raw¬ 
lins] on his proi:)Osition that we solidify Mormons, that we pre¬ 
vent them from leaving their faith, that we estop them from 
surrendering their tenets; that, if they are bigoted, we make 
them more bigoted by discussing their religion or by assailing 
them upon this floor. 

Nobody assails the Mormon as such. Nobody assails the Mor¬ 
mon religion as such. If the IMormons choose to believe the reve¬ 
lations made by Smith and by Brigham Young, that is their affair. 
If they choose to regard them as saints and their books as the 
real Bible, that is their affair. If they choose, within the law, to 
worship according to the tenets of those revelations, they stand on 
the plane which the Christian Scientists and others do, who believe 
differently from the tenets that are entertained by evangelical 
churches or by those who have no religion at all. It is not on 
their faith, it is not on the book of Mormon, it is not on their 
religious practices, it is not on their temples that we are discuss¬ 
ing this proposition here to-day, but it is because they have never 
really and actually abandoned the tenets of polygamy, and there 
is a wide suspicion that they have not in secret abandoned its 
practice. 

The Senator from Nevada recalled the fact that a member of 
the other House who had been elected from Utah was expelled 
from the last Congress. Sir, why was he expelled? Because he 
believed in the book of Mormon? No. Because he was a Mor- 
5632 


33 


mon apostle? No. Because he had a creed which was assented 
to by no single member of the House of Representatives? No. 
He was expelled because—notwithstanding the professions of the 
Mormon hierarchy as to the abandonment of polygamy—he would 
not deny that he was a polygamist, and he defended on the floor 
polygamy as a sacred and divine institution. He stood there as 
the representative of the church before the whole nation in the 
most conspicuous attitude possible, in the presence of the repre¬ 
sentatives of the people and of the country, to defend not Mor- 
monism, but the liberty to live in polygamous relations wherever 
men believed that that was the proper doctrine to practice. 

It has been proved here that a company of Mormons have gone 
into Mexico and settled there in a place where the Mexican Gov¬ 
ernment wants industry, which those people undoubtedly have, 
and the concentrated colonization for protection against savages 
and for the development of agricultural resources, which those 
people undoubtedly have, but they have gone there because in 
Mexico they can freely practice polygamy. 

Mr. President, the discussion of this Mormon question is legiti¬ 
mate just here for the very reason that at this moment there is 
no question upon 'which the American people are more unani¬ 
mous, no question upon which they are more exigent and more 
acute than the prohibition by every possible means of the prac¬ 
tice of polygamy in any State in the country. They are seeking 
to secure the adoption of a constitutional amendment so that the 
Government can reach polygamy in the States. Then why the 
discussion here? Simply because the moment that this Territory 
comes into the Union as a State, that moment the Edmunds law 
no longer is effective, that moment the Federal court no longer 
has jurisdiction. 

Tlie moment it is a State that whole question is remitted to the 
State, and it is free to act as it pleases; and where there is a con¬ 
solidated minority who, by casting their votes according to the 
tenets of their church and the order of their spiritual superiors, 
they will threaten either party with destruction that goes against 
their wishes. That is the danger that the Senators who favor 
this bill are inviting, and that is what we who oppose it are en¬ 
deavoring to prevent. 

I do not agree with the Senator from Utah that the true way 
to meet polygamy is to let the State in, then let the people fight 
it out, and let civilization and education work their way. If you 
let in a community where one-fourth or one-fifth or one-sixth or 
one-twelfth, if you xdease, are solidly Mormon, where there is no 
prohibition which is sufficient to meet the case in the organic law, 
where the Edmunds law can no longer prevail, and the Federal 
power is weakened. I believe that that minority appealing to the 
ambitions of party leaders on either side will prevent any legisla¬ 
tion or any penal statute whicli will deprive them of the right of 
carrying out the patriarchial tenets of the creed which they 
believe. 

Mr. President, leaving that branch of the subject. I now come 
to New Mexico and to Arizona in reference to their future. Cer¬ 
tainly there has been no presentation made here by anybody as to 
the present condition of the Territory which lines up either one of 
these Territories as now possessing every qualification for state¬ 
hood. The question now is as to the future. It has been urged by 
advocates—not on this floor, because there have been none here¬ 
by advocates in the press and by citizens of New Mexico and 
5G32—3 


34 


Ainzona who have come here, that the real merit of Arizona and 
of New Mexico is in the future; that there is to flow into those 
Territories, as my eloquent friend from Nevada [Mr. Stewart] 
says, there is to flow into Nevada, large populations and manifold 
industries. 

But we have, in regard to Arizona, this extraordinary position: 
She has only 122,000 people, of whom 27,000 are Indians. Of her 
95,000 people. 20,000 are unmarried men. There is no such pro¬ 
portion of celibacy anywhere in the United States; and it is ex¬ 
ceedingly refreshing, I wall say to my friend from Utah, to pro¬ 
ceed from the discussion of polygamy to the question of celibacy. 
Twenty thousand out of 95,000 inhabitants are single men. What 
does that mean? It means that Arizona is largely a mining 
camp; it means that a large proportion of its population are not 
genuine settlers; that they are not there to stay; that they are 
the active, adventurous young men proceeding from every neigh¬ 
borhood in the country seeking their fortunes in mines; that they 
are prospecting in the mountains, and they are abiding where 
they can discover a lode, which they may work or which they 
may take East and sell. They have no real interests in the Ter¬ 
ritory, and they are not and never will be part of its permanent 
X)opulation. 

So the population of the Territory grows and diminishes ac¬ 
cording as they discover mines or as there is a rush Avhen state¬ 
ments are made that, in this range of mountains or in that, 
tremendous opportunities for getting rich suddenly are in sight 
for those who have the courage to go to the wiklerness to seek 
their fortunes. 

But, sir, you can not build a State on a mining population and 
on a shifting crowd like this. The best evidence in the world 
that Arizona presents none of the features which will make her 
grow and all of the features which will align her alongside of 
Nevada for all time to come is that in forty years of settlement, 
in forty years of exploitation, and in forty years of Territorial 
condition there has been no population going there for the pur¬ 
pose of living upon agriculture and becoming permanent citizens. 

In forty years Arizona, out of 73,000,000 acres, has only reduced 
to cultivation 254,520 acres. New Mexico, after sixty years of 
Territorial condition, has, out of 78,000,000 acres, only reduced 
to farming lands 326,873 acres, making the total in those two 
Territories of only 600,000 acres reduced to cultivation out of 
150,000,000 acres, while in Oklahoma, which has only been ten 
years a Territory, 6.000,000 acres have been reduced to farms; 
and in the Indian Territory, where the difficulties are so great 
for the white settler, 400,000 Americans going in there have re¬ 
duced 3,000,000 acres to farms. So you see in Oklahoma and you 
see in the Indian Territory all the elements that constitute a 
State—you see the soil, you see the opportunities, you see the 
invitation to the settler, and you see that he becomes a farmer 
and a citizen of the Territory. 

Mr. President, on this subject I have here in the Cincinnati 
Enquirer of February 9 an interview with Judge D. A. Richard¬ 
son, a prominent attorney and gold-mine president of Nogales, 
Ariz., and I ask the Secretary to read the interview. 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. In the absence of objection, the 
Secretary will read as requested. 

5382 


35 

The Secretary read as follows: 

TALK OF THE TOAVN. 

Judge D. A. Richardson, a prominent attorney" and gold-mine president, 
of .^ogales, Ariz., is in the city, accompanied by Dr. A. L. Gustier, of Walnut 
Hills, this city, who went to Nogales a year ago to iiractice his profession. 
Mr. Richardson Avent to the Territory seA'eral years ago from Galveston, 
Tex. “None of the taxpayers or bona fide residents of Arizona—l)y bona 
fide I mean that class of men Avho are there to make it their permanent 
home, and not those ready to grab something and then hie away to better 
opportunitie.s—desire statehood,” remarked Mr. Richardson, “for out of the 
population of 140,00(1 the temporary residents constitute a large proportion, 
outside of Indians. 

The white people do not exceed 75,000. Our tax rate is noAV $4.10 on the 
$100, and property is assessed at its full value. Our schools are maintained 
solely by license taxes collected from gamblers. The.se taxes are S:i0 a month 
on each gambling table. It is a simple proposition of gambling and schools 
or no gambling and no schools. 

If we had statehood, there would bo no license, because there is none in 
any other State, though gambling does prevail, with an occasional raid of 
the houses. If avo were given statehood, it Avould run 50 per cent of the peo- 
Iile out on account of the taxes alone. 

At present there are no taxes on unpatented mines; consequently the poor 
miners are enabled to work small prospects and ship the highest grades of 
ore, but if we had statehood it Avould be necessary to tax everything in the 
country to its full limit, including the output of unpatented mines, and that 
Avould drive half the small miners out of the busine.ss. I Avas surprised to 
see that the question of polygamy has not been raised by Senator Be VEUi dge, 
for if Arizona is admitted by the omnibus bill as it is now Avorded no one 
can say what Avould result as to Avhat polygamy might be. There are three 
large counties where the Mormons haA'e ma,jorities. The Government now 
pays large sums for the support of the Territorial gOAmrnment which could 
not be forthcoming if we had statehood. 

I can not see any advantage to be derived from statehood, and only a few 
politicians who are after office want it. I do not belieA'e the Republican 
party will weaken its policies, indorsed bv' two national elections, by admit¬ 
ting two Democratic Territories, for the Democrats are undoubtedly in the 
large ma.iority in the Territory. As to irrigation, if the GoA^ernment were 
to spend $l()0,(jtK),()00on reservoirs there would not be enough water to furnish 
one-fifth of the Territory where the sands are 14 feet deep. Arizona is essen¬ 
tially a barren waste of mining camps, but after yoAi have liA'ed there for a 
time you would not give it up for any price, on account of its glorious climate 
and conseciuent healthful exhilaration. 

Mr. DEPEW. In tlie same connection, Mr. President, and in 
another Cincinnati paper I find an interAnew with Dr. A. L. 
Gnstetter, former City Hospital interne, Avho, this paper states, 
is at the Gibson House Avith D. A. Richardson, j)resident of the 
Oneida Consolidated Gold and Copper Company, of Nogales, 
Ariz., of which Gnstetter is secretary and part OA\mer. Dr. Gus- 
tetter says they are elated OA^er the AA^ealth of the Territory’s min¬ 
ing interests, but say that the lack of rain prev^ents agriculture 
and cattle raising. Of the 140,000 ‘"inhabitants,” Gnstetter de¬ 
clares only 25,000 are “citizens,” the rest being bent on making 
money and getting out to their homes in the “ States.” 

Dr. Gnstetter is practicing medicine in Nogales, but says that 
the climate is conduciA^e to good health, so there is more money 
in mining. A small capital inA^ested there, he says, and backed 
up by the same amount of business energy as in the States is 
bound to bring success. 

The rainfall in these Territories, according to the Hydrographic 
Survey and the Geological Survey of the United States, is 1 inch 
per month, and tAvo-thirds of that during the summer is absorbed 
by the sand as fast as it falls, Avhile in NeAV York it is 43 inches, 
in Massachusetts 43, in Georgia 44, and more in the agricultural 
States of the West. 

5C32 


36 


Mr. BEVERIDGE. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from New 
York yield to the Senator from Indiana? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Will the Senator permit me to call his at¬ 
tention to the fact that the governor of New Mexico in his last 
report, and I think in every report for iDerhaps the last three or 
four years, has called attention very particularly to the fact that 
the Senator from New York has casually called attention to, that 
the rainfall in New Mexico—and of course the same is true in 
Arizona—Tvuthin a very short time after it has fallen disappears, 
and the ground is as dry as it was before. It disappears by ab¬ 
sorption. 

Very frequently these rains fall in very heavy showers, some¬ 
times called torrential showers, and when they do so fall, the 
water runs immediately off into arroyos or gullies and sinks into 
the ground or is absorbed into the atmosphere, so that the soil 
within two hours, I think the governor of New Mexico states in 
his report, is quite as dry as before the downpour. I have called 
attention to that because the governor of New Mexico himself 
calls attention to that fact in a very interesting page in his rei)ort 
upon the subject of the aridity of New Mexico and its causes and 
results. 

Mr. DEPEW. Mr. President, another evidence that there is 
no future, so far as population is concerned, for these two Terri¬ 
tories is that New Mexico and Arizona in forty years have gained 
only one and one-tenth to the square mile in population, while 
Oklahoma in ten years has gained fourteen to the square mile in 
population. In the one case you have stagnation and retrogres¬ 
sion; in the other you have the elements that constitute a State. 

But in considering what constitutes a State, when a Territory 
is to be admitted, we must have regard to the character of the 
l)opulation; we must have a regard for theiiTiteracy or illiteracy; 
to the educational systems which they have adopted, and to their 
conforming to those conditions which not only show American 
citizenship, but which permit American citizenship to be made 
in the coining generations. 

On the question of illiteracy we have in the United States the 
lowest percentage of any country in the world. Owing to our 
magnificent common-school system in those States where there 
are the population and the wealth which permit the expense of 
the education of the people, there are in the schools of the coun¬ 
try to-day 16,000,000 American boys and girls. The result of a 
school system so beneficent and so wise is that the average of 
illiteracy in the United States is onlyabout six per cent; and you 
must remember that in getting at that six per cent the general 
average is increased by the illiteracy among the negroes in the 
South, by the illiteracy among the Indians, and by the illiteracy 
among the Mexicans in New Mexico. While the illiteracy of the 
whole country under those handicaps is only six per cent, while 
the illiteracy of Oklahoma, only ten years a Territory, is only 
six per cent, the illiteracy of Arizona is 27 and the illiteracy of New 
Mexico is 32 per cent. 

In considering the attributes of statehood, I ask what would be 
the result in any one of our great States which constitute this Re¬ 
public if, over the age of ten years, one of every three of the in¬ 
habitants could neither read nor write? I ask if before admitting 
Tei-ritories as States where one of every three of the inhabitants 
5G8:J 


37 


can neither read nor write, if we ought not to apply to them the 
old Scriptural injunction, “ Tarry at Jericho until your beards 
be grown?’ ’ I know of no handicap to good citizenship like igno¬ 
rance—like illiteracy. 

It has been urged here as an excuse for the illiteracy of these 
Territories, and as an argument that their citizens will be worthy 
of the citizenship of the United States, that every year we admit 
through our various ports from the different countries of Europe 
immigrants among whom the average of illiteracy is 33 per cent. 
I regret, as everybody else does, that the immigration of the coun¬ 
try in the last ten years has fallen off from the high average of 
material for making good citizenship which prevailed during all 
the preceding part of our history. I have advocated and sus= 
tained here with all my might a bill which would restrict immi¬ 
gration into this country to those who are worthy of our citizen¬ 
ship by character, by equipment, and by education. 

But because we have made a mistake heretofore by leaving the 
bars down for ignorance to come in, anarchy to come in, non¬ 
support to come in, pauperism and crime to come in, is no excuse 
to hold that up as a rule for our guidance for the future even on 
immigration. This Congress ought not adjourn until it has placed 
upon the statute books a law which will protect our citizenship 
against this degenerate or unworthy immigration into our country. 

But, sir, there is a great difference even between these immi¬ 
grants and the Mexican population of New Mexico. These im¬ 
migrants, 500,000 of them, if you please, scattered about in the 
States among 75,000,000 people, are lost in the general average, 
and by contact, environment, and association are rapidly lifted 
up until by the time they get out their papers and are entitled to 
vote most of them are able to read, and they become good citizens. 
Then there is another difference between them and the Mexican 
population in New Mexico. In the second generation the racial 
differences disappear. In the second generation the boys and girls 
have gone to the common schools. They have an American educa¬ 
tion . They have become imbued with American ideas and Ameri¬ 
can ])rinciples, and in the second generation they are just as good 
citizens as those whose ancestry has been for hundreds of years or 
more on this soil. But see the difference in New Mexico. We 
acquired New Mexico practically in 184G. To-day, according to 
the governor of New Mexico, there are 45,000 more Mexicans in 
New Mexico than there are Americans. Of the 195,000 inhabit¬ 
ants of New Mexico only 75,000 are Americans. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Where does the Senator get those figures? 
I think that proportion of what are known as Americans, as shown 
by the analvsis of the census returns, is extremely high. 

Mr. DEPEW. I think it is. I think it is 10,000 too high. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. If the Senator will have a careful analysis 
made of the census figures, I think he vull find that the propor¬ 
tion of those known down there as Mexicans and the proportion 
of those known down there as Americans are considerably differ¬ 
ent from the figures he has given; that is to say, a larger per¬ 
centage are what are known as Mexicans than the Senator gets 
from the figures there. That is the reason why I asked the ques¬ 
tion where he got those figures. 

Mr. DEPEW. I got them from the speech of one of the Sena¬ 
tors in behalf of the statehood bill- 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Mr. President. I think that is hardly en¬ 
tirely reliable when subjected to careful and scientific test. 

5632 


38 


Mr. DEPEW. In wliicli he admitted, as I thought, all that 
was necessary for the jnirpose of this argument. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. If the Senator says that is the statehood 
advocates' admission, that is all right. However, I hardly think 
the proportions he gives are accurate, according to the analysis of 
the census figures; certainly not according to the observations of 
the subcommittee. I think the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham] vill bear me out. 

Mr. DEPEW. My impression is that the real figures would be 
a hundred and ninety-five thousand total i^opulation- 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Yes. 

Mr. DEPEW. A hundred and twenty thousand Mexicans- 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. More than that. 

Mr. DEPEW. Twenty-seven thousand Indians and the rest 
Americans. 

For sixty years, or two full generations, or if you count those 
who were past mature age when we acquired the Territop^ three 
, full generations, this enormous majority of the inhabitants of 
New Mexico have remained Mexicans. They have remained 
Mexicans in language, Mexicans in tradition, Mexicans in habits 
and associations, and Mexicans in their methods of life. They 
have resisted, until ten years ago, the introduction of any school 
system, and most of them are unable to read either the English 
or the Spanish language. Those of them who can read at all can 
read only the Spanish language and understand only the Spanish 
tongue. 

Now, see the difference between them and your illiterate immi¬ 
grants. Here is your Mexican father of 1846, a Mexican, speak¬ 
ing the Spanish language. He becomes a citizen of the United 
States and his son he brings up a Mexican, speaking the Spanish 
language. His grandson is brought up a Mexican, speaking the 
Spanish language, and his great grandson is brought up a Mexi¬ 
can, speaking the Spanish language. There is no testimony that 
there is any change as yet in this racial and lingual isolation from 
the other people of that Territory and the people of the United 
States. 

These conditions produce results, so far as justice is concerned, 
which are a revelation and a reversal of all our ideas of courts and 
of juries and of the administration of justice. The inteipreter is 
as much an officer of their courts as is the sheriff or the clerk. 
Even in the sacred precincts of the jury room the intei*preter 
must go for the purpose of interpreting the testimony as he heard 
it and the argument of counsel on either side as he understood it 
to the Mexicans on the jury who did not understand it. This 
occurs both in civil and in criminal actions. 

Not only that, but in political conventions there must always 
be an interpreter to interpret to the Spanish delegates the nomi¬ 
nating speeches and the resolutions that are adopted. The inter¬ 
preter is as much an officer of their legislature as are the clerks 
of their upper and their lower houses. 

There has been testimony here, gathered by the committee, to 
the effect that when it comes to election, the vast majority of the 
Mexican voters can not read the ballot; that it has to be explained 
to them. They do not vote by names; they do not vote by party 
affiliations, because, being Spaniards, practically, they can not 
understand it, but they vote by emblems. The leader of the 
county goes among his constituents and says to them, “ You must 
vote for the rooster,” or “You must vote for the coyote,” and, 
5632 


39 


understanding that, when the electorate come to the polls, they 
vote as the party leader has said—for the rooster or for the 
coyote. 

Mr. President, if this Territory comes in as a State under these 
conditions what will he the result? The American population is 
concentrated in the towns. The agriculture is almost wholly in 
the hands of the Mexicans. Therefore in that apportionment 
which must necessarily come, according to territorial lines, the 
Mexicans will control the country districts all over the State. 
Their votes are cast by the party leaders for the man who has 
their confidence. 

Generations of them in slavery for over two hundred years, 
down to 1865, has left a hereditary desire to be led. So one am¬ 
bitious and one strong man in whom they have confidence casts 
the vote of the county, casts the vote of the town, casts the vote 
of the legislative district. Necessarily in the legislature, which 
will elect two United States Senators to this body, there will be 
a majority of INIexicans, and of Mexicans coming from the con¬ 
ditions which the testimony reveals. 

In the antagonism that will then come up, which has ceen going 
on for a thousand years between the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon, 
does anybody believe that these Mexicans, controlling a majority 
of the legislative districts and a majority of the legislature, will 
surrender to the Anglo-Saxon the prize of the United States Sena- 
torships? They may on the first election, for the first terms, divide 
between a Mexican and an American; but if I know anything of 
Latin characteristics and Latin ambitions, if I know anjdhing of 
the Latin hanging together and acting in common and in concert, 
the whole future for a generation will be that in this Chamber will 
sit two Mexicans from New Mexico representing as Senators that 
State. 

I myself have been almost thrilled at the pictures, presented in 
lurid language by my Democratic brethren, of the horrible con¬ 
dition which would prevail if there came into this Chamber 
Spaniards from Cuba, Porto Ricans from Porto Rico, citizens 
from Hawaii and Guam and Tutuila, and also representatives 
from the Malay Archipelago—the Philippines. And yet they are 
endeavoring to create a condition for party purposes to let in two 
Mexicans into this body for all time to come. 

The history of New Mexico is one of the romances of Ameri¬ 
can settlement. Twenty years before the Pilgrims landed on 
Plymouth Rock, and in the cabin of the Mayfloicer adopted that 
constitution which was an epoch in the history of the world, for 
the first time declaring that they were to form a government 
founded upon just and equal laws, there were a government and 
Spanish population in New Mexico. 

There were a government and Spanish population in New Mex¬ 
ico before Pocahontas saved Capt. John Smith, or before immi¬ 
grants were to be found in Charleston or anywhere along our 
Atlantic coast, and even before the Spaniards were in Florida there 
were a settlement and a’government and a governor in New Mex¬ 
ico. So here we have a Territory which has been settled by 
Europeans and has had some form of government for over three 
hundred years. 

How does that three hundred years, commencing twenty years 
before Plymouth Rock with its forty-one inhabitants, compare 
with Plymouth Rock? Seven hundred people settled in New Mex¬ 
ico twenty years before forty-one landed upon Plymouth Rock. 

563 ^ 


40 


From those forty-one on Plymouth Rock have come, by the com¬ 
mon consent of historians, the institutions of the United States; 
the liberties not only of the American people, but of mankind all 
over the world; the commonwealths which largely go to make up 
the American Union; and the principles which enacted into laws 
find permeating the population and taught in tlm schoolhouses, 
the academies, and the colleges, made the American nation and 
its people what they are to-day—principles which by virtue of 
their all-pervading and uplifting power have gone through every 
nation and have changed the form of government in every civi¬ 
lized nation on earth. 

Now, compare what has come from those forty-one Pilgrims 
with what has come from these 700 Spaniards. They have re¬ 
mained during the whole of these three hundred years practically 
what they were when they first entered New Mexico. Compare 
these 700 Spaniards and the growth during the three hundred 
years of the country in which they settled with the settlement of 
Illinois. Practically the settlement of Illinois began in 1800, and 
New Mexico had two hundred years the start. And yet Illinois to¬ 
day in xiopulation, in cities, in industries, in manufactures, in ag¬ 
riculture, in schools, in colleges, in universities, in railroads, in 
telegraphs, in telephones, in newspapers, in magazines, and in 
the "literary productions of its people would, if it stood alone 
among the nations of the world, be recognized as a great com¬ 
monwealth, with every requisite of power and of majesty, of 
happiness for its people and of example for the world. It almost 
appalls the imagination to think of these people, who are to govern 
the State, existing as they have right upon this continent, border¬ 
ing upon us, and for sixty years a part of us, in such a condition 
as they are to-day. 

The settlement of the northern and the southern colonies 'went 
on without their knowledge. The great debate of the right to 
tax without representation, which loreceded the Revolutionary 
war, shook the world—was a subject of discussion in every cabi¬ 
net in Europe—but it was unknown, unheard of, in this New 
Mexican colony. The war of the Revolution dragged its bloody 
length along for seven years. The Declaration of Independence 
emancipated the world, but the colony of New Mexico never 
heard of the Revolution, never heard'of the Declaration. Ninety 
per cent of its people were slaves to their own people. The ter¬ 
ritory was dmded into great haciendas with one supreme family 
master of life, of limb, and of liberty, and all the rest were its 
peons or slaves, attached to the soil. 

After the Revolution and the Declaration of Independence came 
the French Revolution, that mighty upheaval which overturned 
thrones and emancipated the whole Continent of Europe. But 
New Mexico never heard of it. Napoleon, who, whatever may 
be the charges as to his motives or his crimes or whatever may 
be said as to his achievements, did more than any man in Europe 
for civilization—Napoleon's great victories, his wonderful con¬ 
quests, his dramatic defeat, his exile on a barren rock, all passed 
by. New Mexico never heard of them. New Mexico knew noth¬ 
ing of them. 

And New Mexico would be sleeping to-day in the -sleep of igno¬ 
rance, which is the sleep of mental death, except that the great 
emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday was celebrated 
all over the country yesterday, by his proclamation struck the 
bonds from the limbs of every bondman, black or white or of 
5033 


41 


whatever color, in this land. But the Mexican did not hear of it. 
Ihe Mexican did not know it, and he would not have discovered 
it except that in 1885 a Colorado army swept through the country, 
driving back the Confederates who had almost captured it, and 
then the army said to the Mexicans, “ You are free.” 

Now, my friends, I have been told that if I made a speech of 
this kind—in fact, I was told by a New Mexican politician—“If 
you make a speech of this kind, you will surely make New Mexico 
Democratic for all time to come. The orators will travel un and 
down New Mexico, and they will repeat this speech, and when 
they do we will be driven off the stump. We will have no op¬ 
portunity to win. We will not be anywhere.” But, my friends, 
the orator has to translate this speech into Spanish [laughter], and 
then he has to try to make somebody believe that I delivered it. 

But wlien that interpreter interprets the Spanish there is only 
one question which will arise in the mind of that New Mexican 
audience. They were Democrats once. Their sole industry is 
wool and sheep. But along about 1894 and 1895 they found that 
the wool for which they had been getting thirty cents a pound 
"syas selling for seven, and the sheep for which they had been get¬ 
ting five dollars a piece were selling for a dollar and a half. 
Then these Mexican fanners, who had been peons or slaves up to 
1865, rushed to the county leader and said, “Who has done this? 
We are ruined. We can not raise sheep for a dollar and a half 
and we starve on wool at less than twenty cents a pound.” 

That interpreter said (and if he did not say it there was a Re¬ 
publican there who understood Spanish who did say it), “There is 
a new party in power which has not had possession of this Gov¬ 
ernment since you came into the Union, or since the civil war, 
and since you were free; that new party has been doing things to 
sheep and to wool bj^ taking the tariff off; and if you do not un¬ 
derstand what that means, it means that they have reduced the 
price in order that New Mexico shall clothe the people of this 
country with their wool and feed them with their sheep, to their 
own poverty and detriment. ’ ’ 

Mr. McLAURIN of Mississippi. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New 
York yield to the Senator from Mississippi? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. McLAURIN of Mississippi. Does the Senator know that 
in 1893 there had been no repeal of the tariff or any tariff taken 
off by the Democratic party? 

Mr. DEPEW. On wool? 

Mr. McLAURIN of Mississippi. On anything. 

Mr. DEPEW. In 1894. 

Mr. McLAURIN of Mississippi. It was not until 1894, and the 
28th of August at that. 

Mr. LODGE. The threat was enough. 

Mr. DEPEW. I may have got my date a little wrong, but the 
effect on wool and on sheep nobody denies. Cattle came in from 
Mexico and nearly ruined the cattle-producing countries of the 
West. The New Mexican farmer will go home after that meet¬ 
ing, having been down to Santa Fe or to Albuquerque, and having 
sold his sheep for four or five dollars, and having sold his wool 
anywhere from twenty to thirty cents, and he will hand the money 
over to the good woman—for the Mexican knows nothing about 
banks, and buries his money until it is needed—and she will say, 
“ Alfonzo,” or whatever may be his Spanish name, “ they are going 
5G33 


42 


to fool yon about speeches made in the United States Senate in 
order to get you again to give away your sheep and give away 
your wool, but, Alfonzo, stand by your family and your home;” 
and the Mexican will. 

Mr. TILLMAN. Mr. President- 

Mr. GALLINGER. Mr. President, will the Senator yield to 
me? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. GALLINGER. I am very glad to hear this exposition on the 
part of the distinguished Senator from New York. A dispatch was 
sent to the Boston Journal early in the recent campaign saying that 
I had broken with the Administration on this question and was go¬ 
ing back on the Republican party for the reason that all these 
Territories, if admitted as States, would send Democratic Sen¬ 
ators to this body. In an interview in a New Hampshire paper 
I controverted that statement as best I could, and I am delighted 
to be reinforced in my view by the Senator from New York in 
his argument that New Mexico will be a Republican State, not¬ 
withstanding his speech. I am very glad to know that fact. 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New 
York vield to the Senator from South Carolina? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. TILLMAN. I was just going to ask the Senator from New 
York, if his speech was a joke, why he did not put in it that the 
Democrats would carry that State. The Senator now acknowl¬ 
edges that it is going to be represented by two Mexicans who will 
have no more sense than to remain Republicans the balance of 
their lives. 

Mr. DEPEW. If what has been said by our Democratic friends 
is correct as to the growth of this State, the Mexicans can not 
save it. They say that populations are going in there from 
Texas, from Arkansas, and from Missouri, under this irrigation 
which is to make New Mexico as solidly Democratic, despite 
these Mexicans, as Arkansas, or Missouri, or Texas themselves. 

Here is a joint resolution passed by the present legislature of 
New Mexico: 

Resolved, That there shall he printed in the Spanish language such bills, 
rules, reports, and documents, and all other matter as may be ordered by 
either house of the thirty-fifth legislative assembly. 

We all know what are the habits of Latin jieoples. We know 
that until they get mixed with Americans and adopt American 
habits and get American ideas those conditions never change. 

In view of the fact that Latin people with Latin ideas will 
probably control in the future as it does now the legislation of 
New Mexico, here is a bill which has just been introduced. 

House bill No. 42. Introduced by Hon. Antonio D. Vargas, January 29,1903. 

Read first and second time by title, ordered translated and printed, and 

referred to committee on judiciaiy. 

An act relative to the Sunday law. 

Be it enacted by the legislative assembly of the Territory of New Mexico: 

Section 1. That hereafter no saloon keeper, bartender, nor merchant of 
any kind or description shall be compelled to close his place of business on 
the first day of the week, called Sunday. 

Sec. 2. That hereafter no fine shall be imixjsed upon anv bartender, saloon 
keeper, or any merchant of any kind or description for selling liquors or any 
kind of goods or articles of any description on Sunday. 

Sec. 3. That all laws and parts of laws in conflict with this act shall be re¬ 
pealed, and this act .shall be in full force and take effect thirty days after the 
passage of the same. 

Mr. TILLMAN. .Is that a bill or a law? 

5032 



43 


Mr. DEPEW. It is a bill wliich has been introduced and 
bounding passage through the legislature. 

Mr. 1ILLMAN^, Something like our trust legislation from the 
other end of the Capitol? 

Mr. DEPEW. The difference is that the trust legislation from 
the other end of the Capitol, having passed the popular branch, 
IS likely to be amended in the Senate. 

We now come naturally to the wonderful results that are to be 
derived from irrigation. The amount of misinformation and 
Ignorance that there is on the subject of irrigation in the Senate 
would fill a volume; it would fill a library. I voted for the irri- 
gatimi bill. When my friends from these alkali and cactus States 
and Territories appealed to me as to what would be done by stor¬ 
ing water and letting the little rivulets flow, it occurred to me 
that $100,000,000, more or less, was nothing if that result would 
be attained. So I enthusiastically supiiorted the bill for irri¬ 
gation. 

Now, my amazement is the testimony which has been delivered 
here on that behalf before this committee. Speaking of testi¬ 
mony, as iny friend, the Senator from North Dakota [Mr. Hans- 
BROUGii], is here, I want to say that in the discussion, when the 
able speech of the Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. Burnham] 
was being delivered, he showed that the testimony of one Martinez 
Amador, a Mexican, had been voluntarily given and that the tes¬ 
timony of Martinez Amador was to the effect, first, that the Mexi¬ 
can population did not know what statehood was, and, next, if 
they did know they would be against it. My friend, the Senator 
from North Dakota, sent up and had read by the Secretary a let¬ 
ter in which the value of the testimony of Martinez Amador was 
impeached. Attached to it there is no affidavit. In this letter 
the writer says: 

Now, Martinez Amador is one of our old cranks here to whom no one pays 
any attention. I have heard him called the “Las Cruces anarchist ” ancTalso 
“the town fool.” 


Then, in the peculiar contradiction which characterizes every¬ 
thing that comes from the statehood side, the writer of this letter 
goes on to show that this crank, this anarchist, this town fool is 
the only rich man there is in the place, and that he made his own 
money. [Laughter.] 

Now, coming- 

Mr. TILLMAN. Before the Senator leaves that point, will he 
enlighten us as to whether he inherited his wealth. 

Mr. DEPEW. He earned it himself. He started as a freighter. 
He is the only American Mexican there. 

Mr. HANSBROUGH. The letter does not call attention to the 
fact that the objection of Mr. Amador to statehood was on ac¬ 
count of the fact that he did not want his wealth taxed as it 
would be taxed under statehood. 

Mr. DEPEW. Mr. President, I was only calling attention to 
the fact, no matter what may be the motive which this man had 
to oppose statehood, that in New Mexico a man who commences 
life as a freighter and then gets a farm, and then gets a ranch, 
and then gets so rich, as this letter says this man has, that he 
lives upon his income without labor, is in New Mexico regarded 
by advocates of statehood as a crank, an anarchist, a town fool. 

Every American certainly wants this great desert to blossom as 
the rose. It is no pleasure for any Senator to stand here and de- 
5633 


44 


scribe the conditions which exist in this Territory. It is no pleasure 
for any Senator to produce the testimony which shows that the 
hopes which were held about irrigation will never be realized. 
Everybody here would be delighted beyond language if they could 
be. The Fourth of July oration which the Senator from Nevada 
has said I ought to make, I would make with all the power I possess 
if the expenditure of $100,000,000 or $500,000,000 would irrigate 
these arid plains and enable large populations to live there; would 
produce homes, villages, cities, industries, and add to the wealth 
and glory of our country. But I pause on the threshold of the 
introduction of a new State into the Union when the argument for 
that State is that its growth is to come from irrigation, when an 
examination shows that irrigation has about reached its limits. 

New Mexico can be irrigated only by the Rio Grande and Pecos 
rivers. The testimony shows that these rivers have reached their 
full flood, and that the rivers in Arizona in many cases have 
fallen off. 

There is the testimony taken at Phoenix, where the land irri¬ 
gated is less to-day than it was forty years ago. There is the testi¬ 
mony that the Salt River of Arizona, upon wdiich a large x)ortion 
of that Territory depended for irrigation, has diminished in volume 
70 per cent in the last five years. We also know that as popula¬ 
tion increases in Colorado and at the headwaters of the rivers 
upon which everything depends they are absorbing more and 
more water every year, and that the Rio Grande, which two hun¬ 
dred years ago had water its whole length, now two-thirds of the 
year and for two-thirds of its distance is absolutely dry. There 
are Mexican traditions that two hundred years ago- 

Mr. TELLER. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New 
York yield to the Senator from Colorado? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. TELLER. I think the Senator is referring to wdiat is 
known as the Rio Grande River in that country and not the Col¬ 
orado. 

Mr. DEPEW. Yes; the Rio Grande and the Pecos. 

Mr. TELLER. We call the Colorado the river running into 
the Gulf of Califoi-nia. You are speaking of the one that runs 
down through New Mexico. 

Mr. DEPEW. Yes; through New Mexico. That is the Rio 
Grande, is it not? 

Now, there is the testimony which shows that something over 
two hundred years ago there was a population of 400,000 people 
in New Mexico. Why is it that those 400,000 people in two hun¬ 
dred years have gotten down to less than 200,000? It is because 
the streams dry up or are dried up by artificial processes. 

After forty years of irrigation in Arizona, with all the capital 
that has gone out there from New York and through Eastern 
cities, with all the effort made to develop that agriculture by 
irrigation, and with the land free for anybody, of the 73,000,000 
acres there are only 186,000, in round numbers, which are irrigated. 
One-fourth of 1 per cent of the whole area of that vast Territory, 
after forty years of exploitation, is all that they have irrigated. 

When you come to New Mexico, out of 78,000,000 acres there 
are only 205,000 irrigated. In other words, there only one-fourth 
of 1 per cent has been irrigated. 

Mr. PATTERSON. Mr. President- 

5C33 


45 


The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New 
York yield to the Senator from Colorado? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. PATTERSON. I think it is dne to the Senate that the 
facts as to the figures given by the Senator from New York 
should be made known. 

Mr. DEPEW. I will state that I got the figures from the testi¬ 
mony taken by the committee. 

Mr. PATTERSON. The only witness upon that subject was 
Mr. Newell, connected the Department here at Washington. 
While he was giving his testimony, before ho concluded, I re¬ 
quested the committee to permit the Delegate from the TeiTitory 
of New Mexico to be present, that he- 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. I hope the Senator will allow me. I think 
the Senator will thank me for interrui)ting him as to what may 
have occurred in the committee room. I think that perhaps we 
have had two or three discussions here about that. Of course I 
have no objection to the Senator going on, if, after I call his atten¬ 
tion, he wishes to do so. 

Mr. PATTERSON. Mr. President, when a Territory such as 
New Mexico and Arizona are having their natural resources dis¬ 
credited. when the property and the interests of every citizen of 
such a Territory are being depreciated and their status in the 
industrial and commercial world is being assailed, I think it is 
conmion justice that the character of the testimony that is the 
basis of an attack of that character should accompany the assault. 
It is for that reason that I say the entire testimony is the testi¬ 
mony of one man, and the committee who had this investigation 
in charge brought that testimony in at the very close of the exam¬ 
ination and gave to the other side no opportunity to combat it or 
to rebut it- 

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President- 

Mr. PATTERSON. And refused the common courtesy of hav¬ 
ing the Delegate from that Territory appear in the committee 
room to cross-examine the witness who was produced. I think 
it is but common justice to these two Territories that are thus 
assaulted to let these facts go vuth their defamation. 

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I am surprised at the remarks 
of the Senator from Colorado. The committee called Professor 
Newell to testify in respect to the matter after they met here, 
and we were required to make a report by a given day. The sug¬ 
gestion was made that the Delegate from that Territory be 
brought here to examine Professor Newell. Attention was called 
to the fact that we were obliged instantly to report the bill back, 
and there was not the time, and the Senator from Colorado knows 
that he acquiesced in that- 

Mr. PATTERSON. Mr. President- 

Mr. NELSON. And the rest of the committee know it. 

' Mr. PATTERSON. It simply establishes the proposition that 
that witness was the last witness who was called, and that the 
representatives of the Territories assailed have had no oppor¬ 
tunity to meet what I do not hesitate to say is a slander on the 
Territories, and that I withdrew my objection only when the 
chairman of the committee and other members of the committee 
opposed to the admission of these Temtories made it perfectly 
plain that they would not i^ermit the delegates to be called for 
the purpose of protecting the Territories they represented. 

5G32 


4G 


Mr. QUAY. Mr. President, if the Senator from New York has 
concluded his remarks, and no other Senator is ready to take the 
floor, I should he glad to have a vote on this hill. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. The Senator from New York has not con¬ 
cluded his remarks. He yielded the floor, as the Senator knows, 
for a moment. 

Mr. QUAY. I did not know it. I only knew the Senator from 
New York had disappeared from the floor. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. The Senator from New York has not dis¬ 
appeared from the floor. 

Mr. QUAY. I did not see the Senator here. 

Mr. DEPEW. I will say to my friend from Pennsylvania 
that I was simply gathering more ammunition. [Laughter.] 

Mr. QUAY. Very well; I hope the Senator from New York 
will proceed; and I trust that his next fire will be more effective 
than the last. [Laughter.] 

* * * * * 

Mr. PATTERSON. Mr. President, this line of attack upon 
New Mexico and Arizona is a grave wrong to every resident of 
those two Territories. It is an assault upon every dollar of cap¬ 
ital that is invested in them. It is the most serious drawback 
that could be conceived of to the future advancement of the coun¬ 
try involved. Usually, Mr. President, members of the Senate 
and others delight in picturing the glories, the grandeur, the 
greatness, and the prosperity of the country, but for some reason 
Senators who are opposed to the admission of these Territories as 
States, see nothing in them but evil, and have nothing but wrong 
in them to proclaim. 

* -X- * -x- * * * 

The Senator from Indiana speaks of Professor Newell as a 
scientist, and he wants Senators to read his testimony. Mr. Presi¬ 
dent, the experience of the attorney is that the testimony of the 
scientist in matters of that character as against the testimony of 
of the every-day man of affairs who lives there and has i)ersonal 
knowledge of the things of which he speaks is not to be compared 
in conclusiveness and satisfaction with the testimony of the lat¬ 
ter. Those of us who have tried mining cases can appreciate this. 
If the Senator will but read the decisions of the Supreme Court 
of the United States he will find that the greatest legal tribunals 
in the country have declared that, as against the scientist, the 
testimony of the man of affairs—the common, practical miner—is 
infinitely superior, and carries much the greater weight with the 
court. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Mr. President, will the Senator permit me? 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from Colo¬ 
rado yield to the Senator from Indiana? 

Mr. PATTERSON. Yes. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. I call the Senator’s attention to the fact, 
which no doubt for the moment he has forgotten, that it ai3pears 
from the testimony of Professor Newell that not only is he a 
scientist, speaking as such, but as a man personally familiar with 
the whole subject, having made examination after examination 
on the ground, so that he combines both the scientist’s informa¬ 
tion with that of the person who is on the ground. 

Mr. PATTERSON. Yes. Mr. President, that is the peculiarity 
of scientists; they claim to know everything about every subject. 
A man whose education is in Washington- 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Permit me. Does the Senator deny that 
5633 


47 


it appears in the Record itself that Professor Newell testified that 
he had been over the ground. I call the Senator's attention to the 
fact that this is not a hook scientist, but a man who testified before 
the committee that he had examined the subject on the ground, 
and thoroughly. 

Mr. PATTERSON. Of course, that is the peculiarity of all 
such scientists. There is absolutely nothing with which they are 
not familiar—practically, theoretically, and in every other way. 
To confess their ignorance of any phase of any subject would, 
according to their standard of skill, be to write them down, not 
scientists, but common ordinary people. 

But, Mr. President, Professor Newell is the head or is a high 
official of some Washington bureau. He has gone to this great 
Territory occasionally, up one stream and down another. To 
say that he is familiar with one one-thousandth part of the great 
Territories of Arizona and New Mexice is to declare that the 
age of miracles is yet with us and that men who seem to be, so 
far as effort is concerned, confined to the qualities and abilities of 
a human being, have the qualities and abilities of ethereal beings 
hovering over an entire Territory and enabled to take with one 
sweep of the eagle eye everything that is to bo seen upon the sur¬ 
face and beneath the surface—wherever the spiritual eye could 
reach. 

In reply to the Senator from Indiana, I simply meant to say, 
in defense of those two Territories, in defense of the people who 
live there, whose all is there, who have gone to the West for the 
purpose of building up great Territories and making them great 
States, that what is claimed as to the small amount of land that 
is subject to irrigation is the statement of one who knows sub¬ 
stantially nothing whatever of the subject of which he speaks, 
and, if he does know, then, Mr. President, he is entirely mis¬ 
taken in the claims that he makes. 

Mr. NELSON. IMr. President, the Senator from Colorado [Mr. 
Patterson] seems to have become oblivious- 

Mr. Quay rose. 

Mr. NELSON. I will yield to the Senator from Pennslyvania 
for a motion to adjourn, and reply to the Senator from Colorado 
in the morning. 


Tuesday, February 17, 1003. 

Mr. DEPEW. Mr. President, the debate closed while I had 
the floor at the last hearing upon the statehood bill with an elo¬ 
quent speech on the part of the Senator from Colorado [Mr. Pat¬ 
terson] in reply to w’-hat I was saying at the time. He was 
taking exception to my remarks and giving to them an interpre¬ 
tation and a free expression of his own views. He took the broad 
ground that the position of the opponents of this omnibus state¬ 
hood bill amounted, in the first place, to an attack upon the West, 
the great West; in the second place, that it was a tremendous 
injury to the investments and the population of these Territories 
to have the statements made here become a permanent record 
in regard to their condition with the testimony delivered before 
the Committee on Territories and the views of scientists iipon 
their condition, and, lastly, he complained that the committee 
and the speakers had been guided in what had been said by the re¬ 
ports of a scientist when the testimony of practical men would be 
of more value. 

563;3 



48 


Now, I yield to no one in my respect and admiration for tlie 
great West. I do not propose, however, to assent to Territories 
which are no part of the great West, which have none of the 
characteristics of that magnificent part of onr imperial domain, 
coming into the Senate under the cloak of those great Common¬ 
wealths. The Middle West, formed out of the Territories ceded by 
Virginia, Maryland, New York, and other States, are to-day not 
only among the most prosperous of the States of the Union, but 
they have before them a wonderful future. The States formed out 
of the Louisiana Purchase, fifteen of them, are to celebrate next 
year the one hundredth anniversary of the purchase of that terri¬ 
tory. Those fifteen States are centers of civilization, of popula¬ 
tion, and of wealth, which add enormously to the power of the 
Republic. 

The Northwestern States, great and growing, and the State of 
my friend the Senator from Colorado, great and growing, are all 
parts of this Great West. This Great West has over 80,000,000 
of the 76,000,000 of the people of the United States, and it can 
not be put in comparison with Arizona and New Mexico. That 
territory which came from Mexico to us, which is a part of Colo¬ 
rado (the poorest part), New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah— 
that is not the Great West. It was known while the Great West 
was being built up as the Great American Desert on the maps 
which we had in the schoolrooms in our boyhood. That terri¬ 
tory was settled long before the Great West had a white inhabit¬ 
ant. It was under territorial governments of Mexico two hun¬ 
dred years before the Great West had Territorial governments or 
populations. While that territory has remained stagnant, the 
Great West which I have alluded to, the States under the ordi¬ 
nance of 1787, the States of the Louisiana purchase, and the 
other States of the Northwest, have grown to be nearly one-half 
in population, in power, and in wealth of the Republic, and 
are advancing more rapidly than any other part of this great 
nation. 

So I, sharing any enthusiasm which my friend the Senator from 
Colorado may have, will join in his most glowing periods of the 
Great West. But I can not stand here and permit him to hide 
behind this magnificent association of Commonwealths, of areas, 
of civilization, and of all that makes a great country, these al¬ 
kali plains and arid wastes and these unpopulated districts, which 
in three hundred years have stood so far behind the Great West, 
and call them the Great West and equally deserving statehood. 

Mr. President, as to the suppression of the truth or as to mis¬ 
statements, I have seen no misstatements in regard to the present 
conditions which prevail in Arizona and New Mexico. They are 
not the vaporings of the platform; they are not anonymous com¬ 
munications to the press; they are not the mere statements of 
people which are unverified, but they are the testimony of wit¬ 
nesses on the ground, summoned and appearing and giving their 
testimony before one of the committees of the Senate. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Under oath. 

Mr. DEPEW. And giving that testimony under oath, each 
witness subject to all that brings out the truth in our courts and 
tests the veracity and credibility of witnesses by a cross-exam¬ 
ination by those who are anxious to let in those Territories as 
States and who wanted as favorable testimony as possible. There 
has been no perversion of the truth and there has been no sup¬ 
pression of the truth. 

5632 


40 


It would be a great misfortune if in adding at this period of 
our history new Commonwealths to take their equal position 
through their United States Senators in this Chamber they should 
come ill here under false pretenses, under a suppression of the 
truth, or under a keeping back of the facts which, if known, 
would prevent the American people justifying their arriving yet 
at statehood. 

The suppression of the truth, Mr. President, is not in telling 
the exact facts about these States, and therefore preventing their 
immediate admission, but it is in admitting them. We all re¬ 
member the old couplet, so often recited and never controverted: 

Truth crushed to earth shall rise again: 

The eternal years of God are hers; 

But Error, wounded, writhes with pain, 

And dies among its worshippers. 

But, for the first time since that couplet was quoted in sermons, 
in orations, and in schoolbooks, the admission of these Territo¬ 
ries, unless the truth were told, would bury truth so that it could 
never rise again, because if these Territories came in as States 
without our knowing all about them—no matter if the truth did 
injure property no matter if it did stop booms, no matter if it 
did interrupt speculations, no matter if it was hostile to pro¬ 
moters—if they came in because the truth was suppressed, on 
that account, then, as no State can ever be put out of the Union, 
truth would be buried under the Dome of this Capitol, and truth 
could never rise again until in the crack of doom and on the day 
of judgment there was a dissolution of the Union. 

I was very much surprised at the position which my friend, the 
Senator from Colorado, took at this late day in reference to the 
superiority of the practical man to the scientist on a question like 
that of the possibilities of irrigation, of the possibilities of storing 
water, of the area that could be watered by storage, and of ab¬ 
sorption and evaporation. 

The old river Nile has flowed from its mythical source—myth¬ 
ical until our generation—for millions of years, making fertile by 
the overflow of its banks the territory through which it ran. As 
the headwaters became settled the flow ceased to be as great, and 
distress came to that country, which, during the whole classic 
period, was the granary of the world. “ The man wuth the hoe ” 
and the plow, and the men with the boat propelled by oar or sail 
or rope or pole, the men who traveled up and down, were all intent 
upon the relief of agriculture along this great river. Twenty odd 
dynasties came in the ancient period, and -were unequal to the 
task. The highest civilization was succeeded by Mohammedan¬ 
ism, and the best brain of all civilization during historic and 
-nonhistoric periods has given itself to this problem of the Nile. 

The Nile differs from the Rio Grande and the Pecos and the 
Salt River of our Territories in the fact that it flows all the year 
round, but at the flood it overflowed its banks and made agri¬ 
culture possible. It has been reserved for the last decade, for 
the engineer under the government established there by Great 
Britain, to solve the problem of old Nile and to harness her to 
industry. The great dam at Assuan, the most wonderful structure 
of ancient or modern times, has impounded those waters in such a 
way that hereafter there will be no more drought in Egypt and 
no more suffering among the farmers. Instead of relying upon 
the uncertainties of weather, of sunlight, of drought, and of flood, 
the river is controlled, and controlled by science. 

5C32—4 


50 


A scientific gentleman, selected by the United States Govern¬ 
ment Ijecause he is at the head of his profession, is appointed the 
chief hydrographer of the United States Geological Survey, Prof. 
F. H, Newell. He has no private purposes to accomplish, he has 
no i^olitical or personal aims in view, but under his oath of office, 
knowing that this work is to be verified or disputed by all the 
selfish interests—and properly selfish interests—affected in those 
vast Territories, he is sent out there by the Government for the 
purpose of making investigation and report. He visits every part 
of those Territories with his assistants; he travels up and down 
those rivers; he goes to the mountains; he looks at the lakes; he 
estimates the rainfall, and he ascertains the storage capacity of 
the water there is in all that country. 

Now, his conclusions are disputed, because it is said that the 
practical man knows more on this subject than the scientist pos¬ 
sibly can. I will admit that the cowboy knows more about herd¬ 
ing his cattle and taking care of them than a professor of the Geo¬ 
logical Survey; I will admit that the farmer ^rill know more as to 
the management of his crops and the miner as to the working of 
his mines, but it is simply absurd to say that the cowboy or the 
farmer or the miner or the prospector, in the limited area in which 
he works, with the limited information that he has on such sub¬ 
jects, can state what is the amount of the flow of the Rio Grande, 
of the Pecos, and of the Salt River; that he can tell what is the 
amount of water which is gathered and which may be stored in 
the mountains and at the sources of these rivers; that he can tell 
how much acreage of water is necessary for the purpose of 
irrigating an acre of land. His testimony would be absolutely 
worthless. But here is an expert of the Government, a distin¬ 
guished scientist, whose object in testifying is simply to tell the 
truth. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Before the Senator from New York reads 
the testimony of Professor Newell, I wish to say that Professor 
Newell is not only the hydrographer of the United States Geolog¬ 
ical Survey, and a scientist of great eminence, as the Senator from 
New York says, but also that he has personally and ijractically 
familiar knowledge of the section of country of which he testi¬ 
fies. That appears, as I think the Senator from Colorado [Mr. 
Patterson] will remember, on the face of the testimony itself. 
So that the testimony of Professor Newell is not only the testi¬ 
mony of a scientist such as the Senator from New York has 
described, but also the testimony of a practical man, who has 
examined the situation on the ground. Therefore the value of 
his scientific testimony is reenforced and emphasized by his prac¬ 
tical and personal examination of the subject-matter. 

Mr. PATTERSON. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from New 
York yield to the Senator from Colorado? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

I^tir. PATTERSON. It is not my purpose to interrupt the 
Senator from New York at all in his speech to-day, as I under¬ 
stood him to say on yesterday that he was anxious to conclude 
this afternoon, as he was obliged to leave the city, so I shall not 
now indulge in any interruption, except to say that if an oppor¬ 
tunity is offered, without trenching too much upon the Senator 
or taking too much of the time of the Senate, I shall be able to 
demonstrate from official documents in the Department and on 
the testimony of the Department itself that Professor Newell is 
5632 


51 


sadly mistaken about the capabilities of New Mexico as to the 
amount of water and everything that pertains to the agricultural 
I)ossibilities of the Territory. 

_ I think I shall also be able to demonstrate in the most conclu¬ 
sive way that the suggestion of the Senator from New York [Mr. 
Depew] that New Mexico is standing still and is not progressing 
vdth the West, that the new life and new blood which is now 
coursing in this country from one end of it to the other is not 
flowing into New Mexico—I think I shall be able to demonstrate 
that the Senator is sadly mistaken in that respect also. But I do 
not think it would be fair to him, in view of the matter of time, 
to interrupt him to do so now. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. The Senator from New York had all day 
and the Senator from Colorado has plenty of time. 

Mr. PATTERSON. The Senator from Indiana suggests that 
the Senator from New York has all day and that I have plenty of 
time. If the Senator from New York will say that, I will ^ve 
him a few facts and figures now, which I think will change his 
views upon the subject. 

Mr. DEPEW. If the Senator thinks he has any facts which 
can change my views I want to hear him now. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. Mr. President, that was a sotto voce re¬ 
mark of mine, such as frequently passes between my very good 
and honorable friend the Senator from Colorado and myself. 

Mr. DEPEW. Professor Newell says that it has been his duty 
to examine from a scientific standpoint the physical conditions of 
New Mexico and Arizona, and that since 1888 he has spent con¬ 
siderable time in those Territories and in the adjoining States. I 
read the following from his testimony: 

The Chairman. Will you state to the committee, in your own way, the 
situation in the Territory of New Mexico with reference to the question of 
aridity? 

Mr. N ewelTj. The Territory is well within the ai’id region, and agriculture 
there is dependent almost entirely upon the artificial application of water. 

The Chairman. By the artificial aiiplication of water you mean irriga¬ 
tion? 

Mr. Newele. Yes. sir; iiTigation. The principal source of supply is the 
Rio Grande and its largest tributary, the Pecos River. The United States 
Geological Survey has been measuring the flow of the Rio Grande where it 
enters New Mexico, and at various points along its cour.se. We have also 
measured some of its tributaries, and have measured where it leaves the 
Territory to form the boundary line between Texas and the Republic of 
Mexico. We have been making studies of the extent to which that water 
can be used for irrigation purposes in the future. 

No'w, where is the man of the rule of the thtimb, the practical 
man, who has made investigations of that kind? And where is 
the man who has made investigations of that kind who had the 
scientific knowledge to make his investigations of any earthly 
value? 

The Chairman. Will you state to the committee the extent to which that 
water is used at present? 

Mr. Newell. The usual summer supply is entirely employed, and there is 
now a considerable acreage under cultivation for which there is not a suffi¬ 
cient supply of water in all seasons. 

That is now. 

The spring flow—the floods—in large part go to waste, and water storage 
is absolutely essential to the future development of the Territory. 

He then goes on to state that there is some water storage, but 
that it could be greatly improved. Then Senator Patterson takes 
up the cross-examination in regard to this water storage: 

Senator Patterson. Tremendous volumes of water come down those 
rivers during certain seasons of the year, do they not? 

Mr. Newell. They are very large. 

5632 


52 


Senator Patterson. If the waters conlcl be conserved a very heavy per¬ 
centage of land could be put under irrigation, could it not? 

Mr. Neavele. Wo have been measuring the amount of water, and if it 
could all be saved several hundred thousand acres could be iirigated. 

“ Several liiiiidred thousand acres,” and you must remember, 
]Mr. President, that in these two Territories are 151,000,000 acres. 
This scientist says that if the water which is available is stored, 
several hundred thousand acres more can be irrigated. 

Senator Patterson. Is th.at the limit—soA’-eral hundred thousand? 

Mr. Neavelli. I think so. The limit is the total amoxint of water which 
comes down the Rio Grande and Pecos. The measxirements at various points 
on the Rio Grande give the actual amount of water Avhich has passed that 
point during varioxxs years in succession. Those figures I can insert in the 
testimony if you wish. 

Mr. TELLEE,. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New 
York yield to the Senator from Colorado? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. TELLER. I simply want to call the Senator's attention 
to the fact that Professor NeAvell was not spealdng of the tAVO 
Territories, but of Ncav Mexico alone. That statement has no 
relation to Arizona at all. 

Mr. DEPEW. But the testimony that is here in regard to Ari¬ 
zona is substantially to the effect that the condition of Arizona 
is worse than that of New Mexico. 

Mr. TELLER. Mr. President, however that may be, it has no 
relation to the Pecos Rwer,but only to the Rio Grande. No jiart 
of Arizona would be watered by the Rio Grande. 

Mr. DEPEW. I understand. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. But, Mr. President, Professor Newell does 
also testify concerning Arizona quite as fully as he does concern¬ 
ing Ncav Mexico. 

Mr. DEPEW. Here is what he says: 

Tlie Chairman. You may state to the committee what portions of this 
Territory may be used—whether there is a possibility of agriculture in this 
Territory except by irrigation. 

Mr. Neavell. It is not ixjssible excepting on the northern portion of the 
Territory. There, at an elevation of about 7,00<J feet, settlers are raising 
small areas of potatoes Avithout irrigation, and some cereals, cut green, for 
feeding cattle. 

The Chairman. Aside from that, the occupation of agriculture is not pos¬ 
sible there, except by irrigation from streams. Is that true? 

Mr. Newele. Yes. 

The Chairman. In order to make this brief, I will state that the commit¬ 
tee understands that the irrigated area is about Phoenix, some on the Gila 
River, and some near Yuma. 

Mr. Newell. Yes. 

The Chairman. What can you state about the sufficiency or the insuffi¬ 
ciency of the Avater supply for the irrigation canals about Phoenix? 

Phoenix, we must remember, Mr. President, is the most im¬ 
portant, as Avell as the most promising, part of the Territory of 
Arizona. 

Mr. Neavell. The condition at Phoenix is extremely serious, as the land 
under cultivation exceeds in area the available supply of water. 

Remember, that is now. 

For the la.st tAvo or three years there has not been sufficient Avater for more 
than half or two-thirds of the land Avhich has been normally imder cultiva¬ 
tion. 

The Chairman. Is that because there is not enough water in the river? 

Mr. Newell. It is because of the shrinkage of the river during the past 
few years. 

The Chairman. Is there any other source of Avater supply for irrigation, 
except that Avater from the river? 

Mr. Neavell. That is the only source excepting a small amount of water 
to bo obtained from deep or artesian Avells, and from shallow wells in the 
gravels near the river channel. 

5633 



53 


The Chairman. Could any appreciable quantity of water be obtained in 
that way, taking into consideration the whole area? 

Mr. Newet,l. That would probably not represent more than 1, 2, or 3 per 
cent of the enth’e area that is irrigable. 

There yon have- 

Mr. PATTERSON. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New 
York yield to the Senator from Colorado? 

Mr. DEPEW. I will yield in a moment if the Senator will 
allow me to conclude just one statement. 

Mr. PATTERSON. Very well. 

Mr. DEPEW. The testimony is here that the rivers about 
Phoenix, especially the Salt River, have diminished seventy per 
cent in volume in the last five or six years. 

Mr. PATTERSON. Mr. President, upon the theory that I will 
not interfere with the Senator’s movements after to-day, I will 
venture to interrupt him at this time for the purpose of making 
some suggestions upon the area of irrigable land in New Mexico as 
we find the subject treated by the Department of the Interior, and 
especially now with reference to New Mexico. Professor Newell 
summed up his statement with reference to the amount of lands 
subject to irrigation in New Mexico as follows: 

Mr. Newell. We have been measuring the amount of water, and if it 
could all be saved several hundred thousand acres could bo irrigated. 

Senator Patterson. Is that the limit—several hundred thousand? 

Mr. Newell. I think so. The limit is the total amount of water which 
comes down the Rio Grande and Pecos. 

So that Professor Newell took into consideration the two rivers 
in this part of his testimony—the Rio Grande and the Pecos. He 
furnished the committee later, and it is inserted in the testimony, 
with a table of the amount of water that comes down the Rio 
Grande according to measurements at two different x^oints. 

* * * * * * * 

Based upon these facts and these data, and based uiDon the ex- 
l^eriences of men who have lived in the Territory, with the possi¬ 
bilities for the economical use of water in view, the ox^inion of 
the best and the most x>ractical men in the Territory of New 
Mexico is that, instead of 200,000 or 300,000 acres being the limit 
of land that may be reclaimed in the course of a comparatively 
few years, at least 10,000,000 acres of land in the Territory of 
New Mexico will be made to bloom and blossom as the rose. 

Having those facts in mind, I suggested the other night that 
very great injustice was being done both to the Territory of New 
Mexico and to the Territory of Arizona by taking the testimony 
of a single man. Professor Newell, who is a scientist and a theo- 
idst and is not a practical man, with a practical knowledge of the 
possibilities of the economical use of water in irrdgating districts. 
If these Territories are admitted as States into this Union, I be¬ 
lieve, so strong is the love of justice in the heart of the Senator 
from New York, that within ten years, if he is then a member 
of this body—and I trust he will be—he will rise in his seat and 
apologize to the people of New Mexico and Arizona for having 
given credence to some of the statements that were made before 
the committee. 

Mr. DEPEW. Mr. President, I appreciate the comxfiiment of 
the Senator from Colorado, but I think the great difference be¬ 
tween the Senator from Colorado and me is that the statements 
which have been given him and from which he reads are those of 
the x^romoter, of the speculator, of the local man who is interested 
5632 




54 


In booming the Territory, while mine are from a cold-blooded, 
clear-headed, thoroughly trained scientist who knows what he is 
talking about. 

* * * * -x- -X- -x- 

I am not disputing the word from his standpoint of a promoter 
or a speculator. I fall in with them all the while. So many of 
them come to New York with mining propositions that I have be¬ 
come acquainted with every inhabitant of both Territories. 
Philanthropically alive to my welfare, regardless of cost to them¬ 
selves, they i:)resent to me every week the opportunity to secure 
fortunes that would make those now talked of all over the world 
pale into insignificance. My distrust is not of their sincerity, 
honesty, or truthfulness, but it is of the basis upon which they 
build those tremendous statements. 

I was induced some years ago, under statements in regard to 
irrigation, artesian wells, stored waters, and canals, with the 
wonderful production which would surpass that of any fields in 
the world, to make an investment in an irrigating company, pri¬ 
marily to make money, secondarily to develop the Territory, so 
that before ten years elapsed I might view the millions settled 
upon the reclaimed land coming here and demanding statehood— 
the owners of millions of acres yielding three crops a year by irri¬ 
gation. The voice of the siren sounded in my ear, the siren be¬ 
ing moved by stored water. [Laughter.] That irrigating prop¬ 
osition is still working. The lands are still there; the canals are 
there; the storage reservoir is up in the mountains. Sometimes 
water comes into it; sometimes it does not. It takes a large part 
of the revenue to get the silt out which is the inevitable adjunct 
of waters coming down from the mountains. 

Mr. SPOONER (to Mr. Depew). But your money does not 
come out of it. 

Mr. DEPEW. And everything else comes out of it, as the pro¬ 
moter said, except my money. [Laughter.] 

Now, here is a letter addressed to the Senator from Wisconsin 
[Mr. Spooner] by the educational association of New Mexico. 
I presume on this question the Senator from Colorado and I will 
agree that the educational association must necessarily be com¬ 
posed of the l^est informed people of that Territory, unless he 
carries his criticism of scientists also against the board of educa¬ 
tion of the Territory of New Mexico. 

The board states: 

The statehood bill, now in the hands of the Committee on Territories, 
provides for granting more lands to New Mexico when she becomes a State, 
but the bill makes no restrictions as to the price or method of selling these 
lands. It permits immense speculation to occur to the sacrifice of our school 
interests. No State was ever admitted into the Union which needed more 
assistance in the establishment and support of a system of education than 
does New Mexico to-day. 

Now, I read further from the communication of the board of 
education: 

From Governor Otero’s report for 1899 ("page 6) it will be seen that out of 
about 79,0(X),000 acres in the Territory about 24,000,000 acres are already in¬ 
cluded in lands and railroad grants, Indian and military reservations, and 
Government entries. It may be readily concluded and easily proven by 
observation that very little good agricultural land remains from which to 
select the lands already given or yet to be given to NeAv Mexico for educa¬ 
tional and other purposes. Large tracts of the Government land still re¬ 
maining are worth but little, on an agi-icultural basis, even for grazing. A 
very considerable part has no value whatever, unless it be for the minerals 
it may contain. 

By the Congressional act of June 21,1898, the Territory is not allowed any 
land declared to contain minerals. A very considerable part of the wealth 
5032 


55 


of New Mexico is in its mineral deposits. Its future prosperity will come 
largely from the development of these resources. 

This statement seems to negative and ignore those millions of 
agricnltnrists whom the hopeful imagination of my friend the 
Senator from Colorado sees gathering and cultivating lands 
around these mythical streams and marvelous springs. 

Mr. PATTERSON. The theory of the Senator from New York 
is based upon a lack of knowledge of what the paper he reads 
contains. It may be true that there is relatively a small amount 
of agricultural land yet subject to be taken up by private indi- 
\’iduals, but if he will examine the map furnished by Professor 
Newell he will discover that probably a third of the 70,000,000 
acres have already been taken up and are now controlled by pri¬ 
vate ownership, and presumably the best of the New Mexico 
land is embraced within those areas. 

The Territory was covered with Spanish grants, with hardly a 
grant for less than a hundred thousand acres, and some of them 
for four and five and six million. I presume there are 40,000,000 
acres of the best land in the Territory of New Mexico now held in 
private ownership either by private individuals or corporations, 
the origin of the title being a grant. So the statement from this 
educational body in no wise conflicts with what the Senator from 
New York is pleased to term a glowing xiicture portrayed by my¬ 
self. 

May I in this connection show the Senator how New Mexico is 
growing in the matter of manufactures, because I know he wants 
enlightenment? I have here some figures taken from the census 
of 1900. Let me show the Senator from New York how New 
Mexico is growing in the matter of manufactures alone. 

In 1870 the manufactures in New Mexico amounted to $1,489,868; 
in 1880 to $1,284,846; in 1890 to $1,516,195; in 1900, in a period of 
ten years, the manufactured products of New Mexico increased 
from a million five hundred thousand dollars to $5,605,795. 

Mr. BEVERIDGE. What were they? 

Mr. PATTERSON. I have not the manufactures. I have the 
figures of the manufactures of the Territory of New Mexico, and 
am giving the totals as taken from the last census. As to the 
number of manufacturing establishments, in 1870 there were 183; 
in 1880 144; in 1890, 137, and in 1900 they grew to 420. In the 
matter of wages, which is some index of the growth of a State or 
Territory, in 1870 the total wages paid in New Mexico were 
$167,281; in 1880, $318,731; in 1890, $470,361, and in 1900, $1,350,586, 
a growth of 300 per cent in the amount of wages paid in the Ter¬ 
ritory of New Mexico during the past ten years. 

In the cost of material used let us see what the growth has 
been. In 1870 the material used amounted to $880,957; in 1880, to 
$871,352; in 1890, to $691,420, and in 1900, to $3,914,138, showing 
that the new blood of the West had reached New Mexico and is 
circulating in New Mexico and is bearing the fruits of which the 
Senator from New York is so justly proud when applicable to 
his own State, but which possess no virtue of when displayed 
in the Territories of New Mexico and Arizona. 

Mr. DEPEW. Mr. President, I am very glad to hear those 
figures in regard to New Mexico. I am afraid there are none of 
a similar kind for Arizona. But during that period see how the 
country has grown. It is said that the barometer of national 
wealth is iron. In the United States there were produced of pig 
iron in 1870 1,700,000 tons and in 1900 14,000,000 tons. There 
5632 


50 


were j)rodnced of steel in 1870 69,000 tons and in 1900 10,000,000 
tons. The production of cotton in this country has grown in that 
time from 8,000,000 to 9,500,000 bales, and the value of our manu¬ 
factures from four billions of dollars to thirteen billions; and so I 
might go on indefinitely. 

Mr. President, in one of the ablest speeches made on the side 
of statehood in the Senate, by a Senator who is always very care¬ 
ful and exceedingly studious in his researches—I refer to the Sen¬ 
ator from North Dakota [Mr. McCumberJ— he estimated that ten 
per cent of Arizona and New Mexico could by one process and 
another be brought under irrigation. That was his hopeful 
view as a statehood man. From that heestimated that in time 
to come there would be a million people in each of those two 
Territories. 

But there are a hundred and fifty-one million acres in those two 
Territories, and if only ten per cent can be brought under cultiva¬ 
tion, that is only 15,000,000 acres. It leaves a hundred and thirty- 
seven million acres of desert or arid land, of cactus and of alkali, 
to be represented in the United States Senate by four Senators as 
against the States which came in under the Northwest Ordinance, 
possessing all together little more territory, and those four Sen¬ 
ators from the arid lands would neutralize Ohio and Illinois or 
Indiana and Michigan in the Senate of the United States. 

Mr. President, reverting again to the number of years of set¬ 
tlement, I find that New Mexico, with three hundred years of 
settlement and fifty-odd years of a Territory, has $5,605,000 of 
manufactures, while Oklahoma and Indian Territory, with twelve 
or thirteen years of settlement, have $11,000,000 of manufactures; 
that New Mexico after three hundred years of settlement has 
$7,000,000 of live stock, wliile Indian Territory and Oklahoma have 
$30,000,000 after twelve years of settlement; that the farm crops 
of New Mexico after three hundred years are $3,000,000 in value, 
while Oklahoma and Indian Territory are $43,000,000. 

I am? not without some personal knowledge of this water ques¬ 
tion in New Mexico. Having been born on the banks of the Hud¬ 
son and believing that to be the most beautiful stream in the world, 
my attention has been called from early boyhood to the great rivers 
of the globe. I read all about the Amazon with its 3,000 miles of 
navigation. I took great pride in the Mississippi, the father of 
waters, with its alRuents furnishing 4,000 miles of navigation. I 
studied the story of old Nile and of the Tiber, and then I would 
come everj" now and then to the Rio Grande. Every now and 
then I would find a glowing description of the Rio Grande, of the 
immense territory that it drained and fertilized, and the state¬ 
ment that it received its name from its Spanish discoverers of the 
grand river. I saw many of these other rivers, comparing them 
with the Hudson, and wondering at their size and their commerce, 
but it was only about five years ago when I had the opportunity 
of gratifying the desire of a lifetime to see the Grand River of New 
Mexico. When we arrived at El Paso, without stopping for any¬ 
thing else, I immediately left the train and walked on and on to 
see this Rio Grande, to witness the commerce floating upon its 
bosom, to see its river craft for the carriage of freight, and its 
palaces, like we have on the Hudson, for the carriage of passen¬ 
gers, to view the wharves with their busy warehouses, and their 
thousands engaged in the traffic of the great river. After walking 
for more than an hour and not hearing the thunder of its flood 
nor the noise of commerce I turned and walked back. I saw an 


57 


aged man who looked like the oldest inhabitant, and therefore 
likely to give me the truth. I said, “ My friend, I am looking for 
the Rio Grande, the grand river of New Mexico. Can you tell 
me where to find it? ” Said he, “ Sir, you have already crossed it 
twice on foot.” [Laughter.] And then, sir, I found that possi¬ 
bly the reason why it was called the Rio Grande is the peculiarity 
wdiich those New Mexican rivers have, which belongs to no other 
streams in the world—their bottoms are on top. [Laughter.] 

There is something about a contact on the affirmative side with 
this effort to let these arid regions into the Senate with United 
States Senators to remain here forever that fires the imagination 
of the gentlemen who favor it. Every little while we see in the 
newspapers an account of explorers across those great deserts 
discovering the bones of prospectors. The i)osition of the dead 
and the location of the camp tell the story. In that rainless re¬ 
gion the brazen sky, the torrid sand, and the clear atmosphere 
produce what is known as a mirage. There rises up before the 
vision of those thirsty travelers a lake, and they seethe water and 
the trees; and the stock sees the water and trees; and the men 
and the women and the cattle and the horses go forward on their 
remaining strength in eager search for those visionary lakes, with 
their overhanging trees along the banks, which recede as they 
advance. 

I am surprised if the Senator from Colorado did not find in the 
mirage the waters that were to produce those marvelous results 
which I am to wonder at and make apologies for ten years from 
now, after the four Senators from those States have been for ten 
years casting twice as many votes in the Senate as the two Sen¬ 
ators from New York. 

When my friend the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Foraker] one 
of the most eloquent men in the United States, whether upon 
the platform or in the Senate, was discussing this question in the 
best contribution that has been made so far on the statehood 
side, he drew a picture of the conditions which would prevail in 
Arizona and New Mexico when the irrigation scheme had been 
fully developed. 

In that picture the streams were let over these alkali plains, and 
we saw crop after crop every year of alfalfa grass coming up, and 
we saw the herds of cattle and of sheep increasing until the beef 
problem was solved, until the prophecies of those who say that 
the increase of i)opulation of the world is greater than the growth 
of the beef supply were negatived, until we saw that the best cuts 
of beef and the best quarters of lamb and of mutton had been 
brought within the reach of the poorest people in the United 
States for their daily food, until we had the surplus which would 
go abroad to feed the world and make up the deficiencies of old 
Europe, where the population increases so much more rapidly 
than the meat supply that a large proportion of the people now 
never know what meat is. 

But the difficulty with the statement, when you come down to 
science again, is that cattle can only live when within five miles 
of a watering place, or what they call out there a sink hole, and 
that it takes thirty acres of grass to feed one cow. Now, these 
sink holes are wide apart. They have all been discovered. There 
is not one of them that has not been exploited, and there is no pos¬ 
sibility of creating more. I had not then studied this question, 
and so it seemed to me as I was carried along by the eloquence of 
my friend that I saw in reality the old sacred description of the 
5633 


58 


“ cattle upon a thousand hills ” and a thousand cattle upon a hill. 
But in the case of New Mexico and Arizona there are no hills, and 
so it was the cattle around a thousand sink holes, only there are 
not a thousand sink holes around which the cattle can gather. 

Mr. ELKINS. Allow me to interrui)t the Senator. How does 
he know about the sink holes? Has he ever been in New Mexico 
and looked at them carefully? Has he ever personally herded 
cattle there? 

Mr. DEPEW. I would state to the Senator from West Virginia 
that I have not herded cattle there, but if he had heard my de¬ 
scription of the Rio Grande, which I saw and crossed on foot, he 
would have known that I had been there and have some knowl¬ 
edge about water in New Mexico. 

Mr. ELKINS. No: I would have said you thought you had. 

Mr. DEPEW. Now, Mr. President, all of us would wish that 
these optimistic views were true. We wish they were realities 
and no pictures. Everybody who visits the Netherlands and goes 
through the Holland galleries and sees those superb paintings of 
the Flemish masters—those pastoral scenes—would like to have 
those scenes repeated, not in pictures, but upon the soil all over 
Arizona and N ew Mexico. 

There is in The Hague a picture by Paul Potter of a bull under 
a tree with his herdsman, which was taken by Napoleon when he 
overran Europe and looted the art galleries of their masterpieces 
to enrich the Louvre. Holland bought back that picture for 
$50,000. It is valued at $500,000, and Holland would not take a 
million dollars for it. I wish that instead of its being a million- 
dollar picture with a solitary bull under a tree in The Hague 
that kind of cattle might be scattered all over Arizona and all 
over New Mexico. But at present they only exist in the imagi¬ 
nation of Senators who draw these beautiful i:)astoral pictures to 
try and pass a bill—the omnibus statehood—by creating water 
where little does or can exist. 

Something has been said here, in fact a great deal, comparing 
the conditions of the Northwest Territories after the ordinance 
of 1787 and the conditions which exist in Arizona and New Mex¬ 
ico. Sir, there is no one single possible parallel between the two 
cases. The one subject which was pressing the Union under the 
old Confederation was the conflicting titles of Virginia, Mary¬ 
land, New York, Connecticut, and other States to that great 
Northwest Territory. Maryland did a noble part in leading the 
way by ceding her title to the General Government, and then all 
the other State owners followed. General Washington and the 
Congress of the United States wanted to settle that wilderness. 

The conditions were not then what they are now; they knew 
that it was fertile and they wanted people to go there. So in the 
invitations which were extended and in the discussions which pre¬ 
vailed it occurred to the son of Gen. Israel Putnam, himself a 
general in the Continental Army, to settle this Northwest Terri¬ 
tory for the purposes of patriotism by the veterans of the Conti¬ 
nental Army, by the soldiers who had won the independence of 
the United States. 

No such immigration ever before went anywhere. No such 
embodiment of gallantry, courage, and patriotism ever formed 
the foundations of great States as this of the veterans of the Con¬ 
tinental Army in the Northwest Territory. They demanded 
peremptorily that .slavery should not be permitted on that free 
soil. The ordinance of 1787, creating the Territory, had before 

. 50.33 


69 


failed in Congress because it had a prohibition of slavery in it; 
blit these soldiers of freedom demanded as the price of their set¬ 
tlement that the prohil)ition of slavery should be put into the 
ordinance, into the fundamental law, and that then the law 
should be passed, and they had their way. 

They did not accept these lands as gifts. They paid into the 
Treasury of the United States a million and a half dollars, which, 
judging between the value of money then and now, was an enor¬ 
mous price for the wilderness. But they stood there as a barrier 
against the savage Indians along the Miami, who were threaten¬ 
ing western New York. They took possession of the disputed 
lands when the title had not been settled between Great Britain 
and the United States, and they built up those communities into 
States which have become the five great Commonwealths of the 
Middle West. 

You can not compare those conditions and those Continental 
soldiers with their families, those patriots, all Americans, going 
there on the urgent recpiest of the Congress of the United States, 
going there because Washington urged that it was their duty to 
do so in order to build up the country, with the populations scat¬ 
tered over this vast Territory of Arizona and New Mexico, at 
the rate, after hundreds of years, of about one to a square mile. 

Senators, the Senate is nowon trial before the people as it never 
before has been since the organization of the Government. 

In one of the leading magazines for the current month a well- 
known writer on public questions has an article upon the over- 
shado-wing power of the Senate. In all representative Govern¬ 
ments there is an upper house, but none like this one. In the 
British House of Lords the membership is hereditary, but it can 
act only as a check upon the House of Commons. It will defeat 
a radical measure once. The second time it rejects it there will 
be an appeal to the country, and then if a House of Commons is 
returned favorable to the measure, the House of Lords dare not 
offer any further opposition. If it did its abolition would be 
certain. 

The English seem to like this check upon hasty action on impor¬ 
tant questions on the part of the popular branch. 

In France the Senate they elect has no functions except in leg¬ 
islation. One of the most distinguished of public men in France 
told me that the Senate had been the salvation of the Republic. 
He said—and he was one of those who assisted in perfecting the 
framing of the government of the Republic—that after studying 
the legislatures of all countries the conservative men came to the 
conclusion that the best form was an upper house upon the lines 
of the United States Senate. So, while their House of Deputies 
is elected like our House of Representatives, the Senate is a dele¬ 
gated body. 

France did not possess independent States as we have them, but 
the country was divided into large districts, and the boards of 
aldermen, the councilmen, and the meml)ers of the various cities 
and municipalities in the district and the members of the lower 
house from its subdivisions formed a legislature which elected 
the senator. He said there had been several times in the thirty 
years of the existence of the French Republic when in the stress 
of intense political excitement the House of Deputies had been 
swept off its feet, and except for the Senate there would have 
been a revolution—a revolution in which the country would have 
turned to a strong man and a military one, and in the overthrow 
5C33 


60 


of the Repnhlic there would have been socialism succeeded by 
anarchy and followed by a dictator. 

But in our Senate sovereign States are represented by two Sen¬ 
ators elected by the members of the two branches of the legisla¬ 
tures of the several States, who are themselves the selected rep¬ 
resentatives of the smaller and larger constituencies which con¬ 
stitute the senatorial and assembly districts of the several Com¬ 
monwealths. But our Senate differs from the upper house, either 
in Great Britain or in any of the countries of the Continent, in 
the vastness of its power. We not only have our legislative func¬ 
tions, but we are, with the Executive, the appointing power and 
the real treaty-making power. 

The Senate'does not assert itself in any offensive way. It does 
take an independent attitude on legislation, especially revenues 
measures, which would not be permitted anywhere else. _ This is 
submitted to because, as the limit of a Senatorial term is six years, 
one-third of the Senate goes back for instructions from the States 
every two years. 

I remember in Senator Sumner’s time that he insisted upon it 
that the Senate should not surrender, even on the social side, its 
prerogatives of precedence which count so much in the social 
life of every capital. He said that the judges of the Supreme 
Court and of all the Federal courts, the Cabinet ministers, the 
ambassadors and representatives abroad of the United States iu 
every capacity, the whole military and civil force of the Govern¬ 
ment, receive their appointment by the joint action of the Presi¬ 
dent and the Senate; that the creator is always superior to the 
creature, and that, therefore, the officers who thus owed their 
existence to the action of the Senate must necessarily be subordi¬ 
nated to the appointing power. Sumner was logically correct, 
but the Senate, which cares little for social matters, has surren¬ 
dered or suspended its rights and permits judges of the Supreme 
Court to outrank it in the social world. 

The Senate has been called upon many times in recent years, 
and has fearlessly responded to the call, to amend, check, defeat, 
or originate legislation. The fact that it holds the rein upon law¬ 
making and the estoppel upon the Executive is producing every 
day a closer scrutiny of the powers of the Senate, of its make-up, 
and of its representative character. By the admission, under one 
excuse and another, but always because of a temporary emer¬ 
gency for votes to carry the measures of the dominant party, of 
States with sparse populations and little prospect of growth the 
people have grown more distant from the Senate. 

This is not a question of the election of Senators by the people 
or by the legislatures, for that would not change the result so 
long as each State, whether it has 7,000,000 of inhabitants or 40,000, 
has two, and only two. Senators. As the Senate is constituted to¬ 
day, sixteen States having a population of 6,000,000 people can, 
under the two-thirds rule required for the ratification of a treaty, 
defeat an international arrangement agreed upon by the Presi¬ 
dent and the Secretary of State, and the rest of the Cabinet, and 
desired by the other 70,000,000 of the American people. As the 
Senate is constituted to-day, twenty-three States, with a total 
population of 13,755,364, and casting 2,363,285 votes, have a ma¬ 
jority in this Chamber, while twenty-two States, with a popula¬ 
tion of 60,851,857 people, are in a minority. 

5G32 


61 


The proposition before us is to give six Senators to a population 
of 800,000 in communities which possess little possibilities of 
growth in the future, thus adding tremendously to the discrepancy 
between the power in this branch of Congress and the people who 
are represented here. We make one Mexican in New Mexico and 
one Mormon in Arizona equal in political power to twenty-one 
citizens of New York and eighteen of Pennsylvania. Ours is a 
Government by majorities. Every year the sentiment becomes 
stronger for niajority rule, and more and more impatient of mi¬ 
nority dictation. It is possible to conceive of conditions where 
Senators representing a very small minority of the people might 
defeat legislation which the great majority not only demanded, 
but which was for the larger interests of the country. 

I call the attention especially of the smaller States to the peril 
which they are inviting. Their sole protection now against a 
popular movement to make the Senate represent the iieople is the 
clause in the Constitution which saj^s that no State can be de¬ 
prived of equal representation in the Senate without its consent. 
But if for partisan purposes or to gratify ambitious friends in the 
Territories who are seeking national distinction,or for neighborly 
feeling, or for indifference, the Senate becomes more and more, 
year by year, with the introduction of areas as against populations, 
of farms as against people,of mines as against citizens, the strong¬ 
hold of the minority, the people will find a way to remedy the 
difficulty and to control both branches. 

If two-thirds of the larger States, imi>elled by political consid¬ 
erations to take care of the increasing number of ambitious and 
aspiring statesmen within their borders, should pass a constitu¬ 
tional amendment making the representation in this body based 
upon population instead of upon sovereign States, and three-fourths 
of the States, each having a grievance against the minority, should 
adopt that amendment, it may hapi)en that in the refinements 
possible in the judicial mind “equal representation” could be so 
explained away by the Supreme Court of the United States as to 
hold that such an amendment was not a violation of the Consti¬ 
tution, or if a convention should be called by two-thirds of the 
States to amend the Constitution, in that convention the process 
would be simpler. That convention would be based upon the 
representation in the House of Representatives and be a popular 
body. The largely populated States would have an immense ma¬ 
jority and could do as they pleased. From such a body would 
certainly come amendments to the Constitution little short of 
revolutionary against this minority representa,tion. 

Before Senators whose experience here has shown them the value 
of this branch of our Government invite an attack upon it, and 
encourage the hostile criticism which is growing so rapidly, they 
should ^ve to the subject more consideration than this proposi¬ 
tion has received and should hesitate long before increasing the 
distance of the United States Senate from the voter, the power 
and the principles of the majority of the American people. 

Mr. DUBOIS. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New 
York yield to the Senator from Idaho? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. DUBOIS. I should like to ask the Senator from New York 
if he supposes he can get the support of the other end of the 
5632 


62 


country, Delaware, for instance, wliicli compares favorably with 
some of the Western States, and Rhode Island and New Hamp¬ 
shire and Vermont, to that proposition? All the small populations 
do not happen to be located in these new states. 

Mr. DEPEW. They were the original States, Mr. President, 
without which the country could not have been formed. 

Mr. BATE. Vermont was not one of the original States. 

Mr. TELLER. Mr. President- 

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Does the Senator from New 
York vield to the Senator from Colorado? 

Mr.^DEPEW. I yield. 

Mr. TELLER. Mr. President, I do not wish to interrupt the 
Senator, and yet I must confess that after a quarter of a century’s 
service, most of the time in this body, I can not hear with much 
patience the threat of revolution in this country; that the Govern¬ 
ment organized bj" our fathers is to be destroyed because the 
original xdan by which the small States were to have in this body 
the same power that the large States have is now objectionable to 
the Senator from New York. It is not any small thing to talk 
about changing the political conditions in this country, changing 
the form of this Government under which we have lived and 
grown so great and so strong. You can not maintain in this 
country a Government upon tlie theory upon which this Govern¬ 
ment was established if you concentrate all the power in the 
hands of the great States. 

The United States Senate was organized by the wisest men who 
ever lived on this continent, at least, and I think I should not ex¬ 
aggerate if I said ui^on any other. They organized it wisely. 
They provided that the smaller States should have in this body 
the power that the great States have, and now, after more than 
one hundred years, is there any reason for any man to stand in 
this Chamber and condemn that system of government? 

New England, with its twelve Senators in this body, has not as 
many peoiile as has the State of New York. Has this Govern¬ 
ment ever suffered, Mr. President, by the small States of New 
England being represented in this bodj’? I say here, and I want 
to say it to the Senator, that he does not represent anybody in 
this country when he talks about breaking up the form of gov¬ 
ernment which our fathers established, and which the experience 
of more than a hundred years has shown to be the wisest of any 
government ever established under the sun. 

I have listened to a good deal of nonsense, and I have listened 
without protest during this debate to a good deal that I consid¬ 
ered beneath the dignity of the Senate; b^ut I could not listen to 
what the Senator from New York has said without saying here, 
as a Senator from one of the sovereign States of this Union and 
as a citizen of the United States, that I resent the insult, and I 
think the American people will resent this insult from the Senator 
from New York. 

Mr. DEPEW. Mr. President, I regret that the Senator from 
Colorado feels insulted by what I said. I am not advocating this 
revolution; I am not in favor of it; I would be against it; but 
when we add to the minority representation in this Senate and 
take it still farther away from the people; when we make the 
vote of one Mexican in New Mexico equal in this Senate to twenty- 
one votes in New York and eighteen in Pennsylvania we are call- 
5032 


<53 


ing attention to a condition where we can not tell what the 
people may do in the discussions of the future. 

The legislatures of several States have voted to ask Congress to 
call a convention for the purpose of making amendments to the 
Constitution which are specified. But a constitutional conven¬ 
tion can not be limited. It has the xx)wer to make a new Con¬ 
stitution and substitute it for the immortal instrument under 
which we have marvelously developed for over a hundred years. 
In that convention, where New York will have thirty-nine dele¬ 
gates, Pennsylvania thirty-four, Illinois twenty-seven, Ohio 
twenty-three, Massachusetts sixteen, Texas eighteen, Colorado 
five, Idaho three, North Dakota four. South Dakota four, Wyom¬ 
ing throe, Nevada three, Delaware three, and Utah three, and so 
on, this discrepancy existing and increasing in representation in 
the Senate will be among the acute questions certain to be 
brought forward. There will be others radical and revolutionary 
enough to halt prosperity and progress until the country knows 
the amendments adopted and their fate when submitted to the 
States. I deem it my duty to warn the smaller States, who are 
favoring this statehood proposition of Senators without adequate 
constituencies, of possibilities which we all may deplore. 

Mr. TELLER. Mr. President, I wish to say further, if he will 
permit me for a moment- 

The PRESIDENT pro temxx)re. Does the Senator from New 
York yield to the Senator from Colorado? 

Mr. DEPEW. Certainly. 

Mr. TELLER. For many years a number of Senators from 
some of the New England States have represented constituencies 
whose numbers were eighteen to twenty times smaller than the 
constituency represented by the Senators from the State of New 
York, but this is the first time I have ever heard any complaint on 
that account. I know the public service has not suffered by that 
representation, and I am sure it will not suffer if it shall continue. 

Mr. DEPEW. The only difference between the Senator and 
myself, Mr. President, is that to his imagination—for the imagi¬ 
nation seems to affect somewhat the discussion of this subject— 
Arizona and New Mexico are placed upon a plane with New 
England. The situations are not the same. New England is in 
the Union, and these other States are in the Union. The question 
is now, Shall we dilute the majority still further and call more 
acute attention to the conditions now existing where one-tenth 
of the people of the United States govern them through this body; 
that fourteen millions of people have greater power than sixty- 
one millions, and two and a half millions of voters can defeat the 
wishes of eleven and a half millions. 

Except candidates for United States Senators or promoters who 
are anxious to secure for their enterprises the additional credit 
which comes from statehood, corporations who wish State or mu¬ 
nicipal aid and are barred by the provi.sion of the Harrison Act 
which prevents Territories and their counties and municipalities 
from bonding themselves for more than four per cent of their as¬ 
sessed value, there is no interest to be served by haste in the ad¬ 
mission of these Territories to statehood. 

New Mexico has been applying here for fifty years and Arizona 
for a score, and there will be no harm done in waiting until Con¬ 
gress meets next December. The merits of these Territories for 
5t83 


statehood have never been discussed before, and the country ought 
to have an opportunity of examination before we pass judgment 
upon their admission. 

Oklahoma and Indian Territory united to-day possess the 
requisites of statehood in population and prospectfor their future. 
If Arizona and N ew Mexico are admitted they should be united 
into one State. Even then they would have but little more than 
the number requisite for a Representative in Congress. It would 
be wise to make a permanent settlement of this question by thus 
creating one State out of Oklahoma and Indian Territory, and 
one State of New Mexico and Arizona, to be admitted after the 
next Presidental election in 1905. 

5(31 


